Aircraft Carriers in Europe: From an Expensive Tradition to an Inexpensive Universality

... of the Warsaw Pact. The operational readiness of the Charles de Gaulle is still quite low, and Britain today does not have a single carrier of deck-based aircraft. The UK may return the new ships in full readiness in 6-8 years at the earliest, while France – by the second half of the 2020s. Second, the rear echelon powers (Spain, Italy) are actually catching up, and in some respects even surpassing the leaders, namely, in the number of units of this class, especially with regards to strike aircraft. However, this is more due to the natural course of events than to their ...