I could be wrong, but I'd not be at all surprised to find that an integrated CVF/JCA/MASC CTOL vs STOVL comparison has never been done. I do recall once being told that the MASC requirement would not be allowed to dictate the choice of ship type, but that was some years ago.
As I recall, the CTOL / STOVL debate was always mainly driven by assumptions about ship cost (ie cat n trap vastly more expensive than STOVL). The cost comparisons were mainly aimed at finding out whether a CTOL variant fallback option would be prohibitively expensive should the puffa-jet variant fail to make it through EMD. Once they'd figured out that at the size of ship being talked about, the cost differential wasn't that great, the argument was parked and it became a "simple" issue of politics and industrial muscle (ie workshare & expertise for BAE and particularly RR). All sorts of studies were commissioned to back up the desired argument, including the relative operating windows in the SWAPPS to inform available training days based on deck motion limits, but IMHO, there has never been a comprehensive capability v cost study considering all the CVF/JCA/MASC options for CTOL vs STOVL.
Last edited by Not_a_boffin; 30th Jan 2007 at 18:59.