No.It was a common UK French design and the French derivative version has a dedicated steam plant for catapult.They just have to base their design on the French blueprints.

However maybe British will go EMALS.

 

That is incorrect. The CVFs were designed from the start to be upgradeable to CATOBAR should the need arise.  You are correct however in that they will require a separate steam plant since the IFEP propulsion cannot supply steam.  But the CVF design has always included room for this.

well, the basic design work to handle all of that has been tackled under the PA2 project as the French were/are intending to launch and recover Rafales so I doubt it's insurmountable and of course, the PA2 may well be what we end up building for ourselves at this rate.

 

Ian

 

 

This should ideally have been covered in the specifications stage.

 

Now that you are already designing this change will as a rule of thumb cost 10 times as much when compared to making the change while still writing the specifications.

 

Getting the specifications absolutely perfect before starting to design prevents so much unneccesary hassle. It means you only have to design stuff once instead of 4 to 5 times.

 

 

 

Oh they are already under construction that would mean a factor 100 ... 1000 to make the changes needed.

 

A very sound decision by the MOD, I thought going with the F-35B was quite a large tradeoff for stovl capability. The "C" version is superior in almost every respect and resembles a far more potent strike package (500nm extra range compared to the "B" variant).

 

As a UK taxpayer I'm happy with the extra costs, considering we are now spending 25% of our GDP on social security I would happily turf a few million lazy assholes off benefits to pay.