Originally Posted by
Davef68
The decision to go for STOVL was really fixed at decision point - the design was originally designed with either/or options, and that it could in future be amended for CATOBAR (Not least because Thales etc hoped to sell the design to the French). That was in 2002/3 but once the Uk decided to go STOVL the naval architects started designing the details to work that way, so parts that may have initially been intended to hold catapult or arrestor equipment became used for other things - the idea that there were these voids in the hull, just waiting for the change of mind in 2010, or a future refit, sadly didn't match the reality as the engineers and architects designed and built the ship in practice. So it would never be a 'quick change' - not least, think on all the 100s of schematics and plans that would have to be redrawn.
easy.."find".... "replace"........