That's the thing Stuffy there's a lot of 'oh we will just do' Seaphoon going around on the net. However it doesn't meet the realities of defence procurement and how these projects are specified and then built. It would not be some quick turn around whatever hopeful mutterings there are on the net.
Ignoring the difficulties of using Stobar from a training point of view, as has been pointed out the concept of operations of the pre-existing STOBAR carriers is not so much strike and more fleet protection and CAP.
Even if the basic top level technical requirements are somewhat brief and generic they will become ever more specific as they get atomised down, it takes years to get to that stage and everything has to be signed off.
Compound it with the fact it's an aircraft and there will all sorts of safety hoops and certification to get through all of which costs lots and lots of money. People get very very thorough when it's their name on safety certificates.
Stuffy, it has been addressed if the F35 is cancelled out right (never going to happen) then odds on are is that we will have two very big LPH's without davit's and off loading options and no maritime strike at all. You don't just magic away the money that has already been spent and all of the intellectual and industrial workshares. It would be monumentally stupid from an industrial capability point of view. The unit orders may well go down and the individual price will go up and we will end up buying later and later in the production cycle.
Last edited by eaglemmoomin; 31st Mar 2013 at 20:51.