may I point you over to
http://p216.ezboard.com/fwarships1discussionboardsfrm3 where this has been discussed left, right, center, back and forth and the agreement is that it is hugely expensive.
2 options
- STOBAR
- CATOBAR
in both cases you need major rework for the aircraft to survive the arrested landing. a catapult launch would make it worse, as the Goshawk program proves. The Russians pulled at least aircraft in half with an arrested landing.
It has bee claimed that you'd need to stiffen the body a lot, changing the flex of the whole thing. the wings are designed to work with that, if this changes, they could rip off in a strong manoeuver. (not sure how much sense this makes)
The nose offers no visibility for a carrier landing.
the belly intakes are bad for aircrew, both USN carrier aircraft that had them (F8 and A7) had a reputation for ingesting ground crew.
Now, some of these may be BS, but i also quote you:
'In May 2001 Sir Robert Walmsley, Head of the Defence Procurement Agency, when asked about the possibility of a navalised Eurofighter if JSF was cancelled said: "It is not currently designed so that it could use a carrier. We could change the design but we would be faced with a huge piece of work. The materials would probably have to be changed in order to avoid corrosion; the weight of the undercarriage would have to be doubled to support carrier landing which would eat into the payload margin; and the wing roots would have to be strengthened in order to take the full inertia forces on landing. That sounds to me like a very substantial redesign. It is always possible, but it would cost a huge amount of money and it would certainly add very considerably to the cost of the aircraft".'
from
http://navy-matters.beedall.com/jca1-1.htm.
I'd prefer Rafale with a better Radar, which is being developed anyways.