Tech Guy, Hula,
Perhaps I can help a little here.
Tech, your question helps illustrate the difficulty in comparing aircraft that were designed against different requirements. The Gripen is, in my view, a very good medium weight fighter bomber, with some excellent supportability features and good performance. However, it's not a very good naval aircraft, as it wasn't designed to operate from ships. Actually, it's a really poor naval aircraft, as it can't operate from a carrier at all.
Some help here - a conventional naval aircraft that uses catapults and arresting gear needs a range of special design features. The main aerodynamic features are an ability to carry out approach and landing at much lower speeds than land based aircraft, to allow the arresting gear to bring it to a halt, and special aero design to allow it to get airborne safely at the end of the catapult launch. These drive large wings and control surfaces, plus a ton of other stuff. The main airframe feature is the extra strengthening to handle the launch and arresting loads, as well as the far higher landing loads caused by the 'no flare' landing required to accurately engage the arresting gear. This last one is really significant. The Gripen has none of these. They are very, very major and significant, and add a LOT of weight to the aircraft.
Very few land based aircraft have made the transition to a flight deck. The only ones that jump out of my aged brain are the FJ-1 to FJ-4 Fury of the 1950s, and the T-45 Goshawk of the 1980s. The T-45 was just a trainer, and didn't have to carry weapons, but even so it had to have major changes made to operate from the deck, adding more than a ton to its empty weight. The FJ-1 Fury was a minimum change from the Sabre, but it rapidly grew into the totally different FJ-4 to be combat effective. Of course, the STOVL Harrier made the transition with not too many modifications, but that's not a cat and trap aircraft.
Hula, as far as I know, the current deployment of QE with the embarked F-35Bs is planning to extend the envelope of SRVL operations to higher weights and also more demanding deck conditions. I'd expect that they would want to clear night ops as well. Yes, the risks associated have certainly been thoroughly reviewed, and would have been reviewed again before the trials plan was approved. I don't believe there's any loss of 'appetite' - SRVLs are very important to the UK to give greater flexibility and more bring back to F-35B operations. However, I'm not 'in the loop' these days, so I'm prepared to be proved wrong in my assumptions.
Hope this reply helps everyone get a better understanding of the challenges and the solutions that the teams have to develop to get aircraft to sea and operate effectively. I know that this is a specialist area of knowledge, and I'm always happy to help where I can.
Best Regards as ever to all those Fleet Air Arm people who are, once again, showing the world new ways of operating aircraft at sea.
Engines