Forgive me if it's been asked/pondered before, but I can't help but wonder what the americans would have charged us for a refitted carrier of theirs, a bunch of new f-18's and a smattering of E2's etc.
Assuming that the USN would even countenance such a thing, the only carriers they have that aren't CVN are the old Forrestal & Kitty Hawk classes. Mostly built in the 50 and 60s, worked very hard through life and even after life extension refits in the 80s & 90s they were beginning to fall apart. JFK was allegedly a wreck towards the end of her commissioned service which ended nearly six year ago. It also assumes that we could find 2500+ matelots to run the ship on top of any FAA complement.
If you're thinking CVN - dream on, we can hardly get enough qualified kettle watchers for the boats and we'd again be in the same position wrt life expired, knackered ships with huge manning requirements.
As far as back-fitting EMALS / EARS later in life is concerned, it should be possible, it will be merely a question of money. Compared to the rebuild of Vic (stripped down to the hangar deck and rebuilt - literally) or Eagle and Ark, the configuration changes required should not be massively demanding. QE has a significant margin allowance for weight growth - equivalent in weight to "a number" of frigates being welded to the hangar deck - another reason why a large design is more sustainable through life.
Doing this in a refit as opposed to at build will almost certainly be more expensive, but there you go. The "adaptable" design was always meant to be big enough to switch variants if required - and it is. Imagine how difficult a "CVS on steroids" type ship would have been to convert to a CTOL configuration had F35B been canned (you'd end up starting again, from scratch). However, the timing of such a switch would always affect the price, the later you do it, the more drawing and equipment changes are required, never mind undoing work done already.
Nevertheless and without wishing to re-open the debate - it's done and we need to get on with getting the ships completed and as many F35 as we can get (definitely more than 6!) worked up and available - the actual content of the conversion has never been satisfactorily explained. Given that the cost of the hardware was reasonably well known (~£500M) it is still difficult to see how the remainder of the "conversion cost" (~£1.5Bn) adds up. As noted ad nauseum, it's somewhere between 12 and 20 million manhours depending on how expensive you think a manhour is and I just can't envisage how that would be needed to fabricate troughs, add local stiffening, run cables and control, inspect, test and commission etc.
It may be that there is a big nasty lurking there which I'm not aware of, but I'm b8ggered if I can think of anything that would have that sort of impact.
One thing that will be certain. If and when it comes to back-fitting such a system twenty-years from now, the risks and requirements should be a lot lower, even if the physical work content may be higher.
Last edited by Not_a_boffin; 6th Jul 2012 at 10:23.