In no particular order.....
Steam cats might actually have been less intrusive than EMALS in some respects, although not in terms of feedwater, condensers etc. It was always going to be op costs and manning that militated against steam.
The seakeeping issue is valid in that (particularly for smaller ships) STOVL aircraft can recover where ship motions are higher. There are limits associated with glidepath, clearance above the rounddown and motion at the touchdown point for CTOL recoveries. For STOVL, the criteria are less onerous - ie you can get aboard with higher ship motions. The rub is that the sea states where these higher motions occur add somewhere between 5 and 10% tops to your overall operability in the North Atlantic and much lower percentages elsewhere. However, as some pointed out, most DL training would be in the SWAPPS so ship motion would have an effect.
Tankers were never considered for STOVL. "Apparently" they are of no use whatsoever to STOVL aircraft. While you can see some sense in that in terms of max recovery weight and bringback (ie there's no point in having more fuel if you can't recover with it), there is a different argument that suggests that a relatively short-legged aircraft might benefit from having Texaco available either post launch or where there is a crowded pattern.
As far as CVN78 is concerned $12Bn doesn't surprise me at all. It's nuclear and therefore has a number of associated safety & survivability measures and the US are far from cutting-edge in their shipbuilding practices. If you compare the level of outfit in a CVN77 block when erected in the building dock compared to QEC, QEC is streets ahead. The reason this is important is that work done aboard ship when the hull is complete usually takes at least 4 times as many manhours as doing it in the sheds (pre-outfitting).
Mistral is a different kettle of fish. You could not fit an angled deck or cats to that ship, it's design and stability margins would preclude it.
The French have already built three, so much of the "overhead", production of design information, CNC tapes, work packages etc has already been done. Hence the relatively low cost. I would also suspect an element of subsidy to keep DCN / STX St Nazaire with a workload as well.
If you're suggesting that the French would have offered a better deal to fit EMALS etc to QEC, don't even go there. Aside from probably being precluded by ITAR, their cost would be equal or higher than doing it in Rosyth. As noted earlier, the quoted UK "cost" includes all sorts of LOD/Capability funding lines that are nothing to do with the actual fit aboard the ship. The costs of the UK QEC programme are everything to do with political indecision, interservice bickering and very little to do with the size and configuration of the ship.
I repeat my earlier statement. They are being built, they appear to be coming along nicely and capabilities can be added to over time. The sheer size of them will make them much more useful than a CVS-sized ship could ever have been. If there is one flaw, it is in having the aircraft procurement controlled by an organisation that is more concerned with it's own interests, hence the current manoeuvring for a split buy of F35A and F35B, perpetuating an inability to deploy from sea-based platforms, rather than maximising commonality and economies of scale.
Again - arguing about what this capability will eventually look like now is a bit like trying to decide whether your six-month old nipper is going to be a Nobel prize winner or a regular contributor to the Jeremy Kyle show.
Last edited by Not_a_boffin; 4th Sep 2012 at 13:36.