Originally Posted by
Asturias56
World naval Review 2019 has a very good description of the design evolution of the QE's
basically they were originally planned to have, in the Alpha iteration, with a conventional CATOBAR system. This was turned out to be a 73000 ++ ton hi-spec ship that was un-affordable
They then went to a "Flexible design" for Cats etc but by the time they 'd gone down to Bravo (55 ,000) and (via Charlie) back up to Delta (65,000) tonnes costs were up all over and the US had decided to go to the (unproven) EMALS system - which was required a lot more conversion work (and cost) than the original CATOBAR conversion. The RN also didn't fancy developing their own CATOBAR system from scratch (god forbid they'd buy one from France - what would BAe do for profits?) so really they defaulted to what they knew - STOVL. They were lucky there was version of the F-35 available otherwise it would probably have had to have been EMALS but only one ship.
I'm afraid virtually all of that description is somewhat wide of the mark. There were A, B, C & D versions of the design. As I recall, all were done with a STOVL and CTOL arrangement (CATOBAR is a made up acronym). As for French systems I think you'll find they use an FMS supplied C13-3 system from the US and Mk7 Mod4 arrester gear.