Originally Posted by
Not_a_boffin
If only all the independent (ie not RN) force level operational analysis conducted in the mid and late 90s hadn't said that :
1. Carriers were needed and
2. They needed to deliver a decent sortie count, which meant a decent number of aircraft, which meant they had to be of a certain size, which meant that CTOL configuration became an option
STOVL was always the baseline choice for a number of reasons, primarily to do with training burden and force size, together with the perceived risk of EMALS (immaturity) or steam (sustainability) catapults. CTOL was a fallback option because of the perceived performance risk of the B-variant, enabled by the size of the ship which was driven by deck park arrangement for reduced manning. It did have advantages in both variety of potential aircraft and MASC capability. For a brief period when the B looked in real trouble, it was a good option to have, given 1 and 2 above.
The brief CTOL switch and then reversion was made too late (by about 3 or 4 years) to make it affordable, although I'm reasonably sure that the ACA over-egged the conversion costs to make certain.
The total spent and budgetted to date on both QEC and F35B are still significantly less than that on Typhoon - moreso if one considers NPV.
hopefully the f35b program can drag itself up by the bootlaces then.