It's amazing that the govt. can waste £9.3bn on the games, and yet won't allow the navy to build at full spec top quality ships. As i understand it the 2 carriers will be without side armour, will not have AAM defence such as Sea Sparrow on the US carriers. CIWS are a v. last resort and are not fulproof.

Really these ships need to have a large pot of cash to build the ships, kit them out fully and ensure that they are fully operational, not like other navy projects whereby the ship is built at a v. reduced budget, isnt then sea worthy and has to go back into port for another refit at twice the cost.

Come on Gordon, wakey wakey!

Rob, Greater London,

Yet again the arrogant dry economists (the ones who are wet behind the ears) at Treasury rule the roost (or here the waves), regardles of the views of those who will have to operate the ships.

Perhaps the UK should look at the history of penny pinching the armed forces in the last century to see if it can learn the lessons it should have done. There were some very close shaves.

Gerry Watts, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

I really fear that these long overdue warships, when finally contracted by the civil service penny pinchers in the Treasury and MoD, are really designed and built as proper warships with specifications as wanted by those who sail and fight at sea. I hope the lesson was learned with HMS Ocean which was built to cicilian vessel standards and has since had millions spent during refits to bring it up near battle standards - simple things like redundant cabling circuits so that if cables got shot away there was a duplicate or even a triplicate circuit using armoured cable ducts.

Chris Goodman, Fareham , UK