The Royal Navy has agreed to sacrifice one of its two new aircraft carriers to save about £8.2 billion from the defence budget.
The admirals, who have battled for a decade to secure the two new 65,000-ton carriers, have been forced to back down because of the soaring cost of the American-produced Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) aircraft due to fly off them.
The move is a blow to the navyÂ’s prestige and has come on the heels of Gordon BrownÂ’s announcement last month that he was axing one of the navyÂ’s four Trident nuclear deterrent submarines. |