[fnrslvr]

There are 12 catobar carriers in existence at the moment, 11 operated by the US Navy. (Soon to be 13 with the Chinese Fujian carrier entering the mix.) Maybe the UK would've gotten their act together and fitted catobar on the Queen Elizabeths if the F-35B didn't exist, but for the most part I think this is indicative of the challenge of putting together the hardware to launch/recover modern fighter aircraft at sea.

The F-35B may have started as a Marines ask, but it seems to have become an export success with countries that aren't really up to footing the costs for catobar-capable flat-tops for modern fighter aircraft during peacetime, e.g. the UK, Japan, Italy, Korea, potentially Spain.

The Marines have also been exploring the F-35B in austere basing, EABO conops, airborne amphibious ops, etc., so it's not just carrier ops.

It has been a lead weight on the JSF development project, for sure, but the F-35B does seem to provide an intriguing capability now that it's a thing. I'm also not convinced that a dedicated STOVL project would've given a more suitable plane -- it really seems like you would want the whole stealth + advanced sensor/avionics package on your jump jet to meet needs like naval LHD-borne fixed-wing AEW/air interceptor/task group anti-air range extender, airborne amphibious ops CAS, etc. Owing to the difficulties encountered by the JSF in supporting the F-35B, I doubt it's going to be succeeded by another platform for a very long time.

[jabl]

I'm not saying the F-35B should be canceled. That would be dumb. All the money has been poured into the project, and the thing exists and works, and even provides some kind of capability that wasn't there before.

Just saying that in a hypothetical world in the early 90'ies (a quick wikipedia look says that the STOVL JSF can be traced back at least to a 1992 USMC/USAF project that eventually morphed into the JSF), if it would have been decided back then that, nope, we're not gonna do a follow-up to the Harrier, then navies that are currently looking at the F-35B would have decided to either upgrade existing small carriers with catobar and/or ordering new carriers with them. And I think in that case the total cost could have been cheaper. Yes, somewhat more expensive carriers, but cheaper planes and much less R&D cost.

[fnrslvr]

I didn't interpret you as saying that the F-35B should be cancelled. I'm more bringing context that it's not solely a US Marines toy, and not solely a baby-carrier plane.

I don't think that adding catobar support for modern fighter platforms is viable for all of these small carriers that are incorporating the F-35B. Admittedly my understanding of the situation is very shaky, but by all accounts I've heard, the catapults and arrestor gear place very significant strain on even the US supercarriers. More countries used to operate catobar carriers in the past (such as my home country of Australia, up until the retirement of the Melbourne and a decision to discontinue fixed-wing carrier ops), which I suspect has to do with the operation of lighter aircraft from the carriers at the time. (~7t max takeoff weight for a Sea Venom, ~11t for a Skyhawk; compare to ~30t for a Super Hornet or an F-35C.) Maybe the situation has gotten better with EMALS cats, but we're yet to see this technology used to make baby catobar carriers a thing, so who knows?

The countries in question would likely need to upgrade from their ~25000t LHDs to something with at least the displacement of the 40000t Charles de Gaulle. (Not to mention that most such carriers use nuclear power for both propulsion and to power the cats and traps.) Such vessels would come at great expense, and likely also have significantly larger crewing requirements, which tends to be a pain point for middle-power navies. I also don't think a lot of these vessels would've been built bigger in anticipation of catobar requirements, as they were largely originally specced for helicopter deck and amphibious roles. The F-35B really seems like an opportunity which all of these countries have siezed upon after seeing it come to fruition.

Again, it seems like you have a case with the Queen Elizabeths, though it seems like the UK balked at the cost of fitting catobar, if that's any indication.

As to whether the costs would've been offset by savings in the development of the F-35B, I don't even think we're talking about costs on the same magnitude here. For reference, total R&D costs for the F-35 as of 2019 were $71.9billion in 2012 dollars. Building and sustaining big boy carriers for middle-power countries would've cost the JSF partners hundreds of billions of dollars, easily.

[jabl]

> I didn't interpret you as saying that the F-35B should be cancelled. I'm more bringing context that it's not solely a US Marines toy, and not solely a baby-carrier plane.

Fair enough.

As for the size of a carrier needed for F-35, the Royal Navy was apparently operating the Phantom from ~30kt carriers. They did some tests with a smaller ~25kt carrier and found that it worked in principle but required lowered fuel load etc. I had assumed the Phantom to be a really massive plane, but it turns out the max weight is around 30t, similar to a F-35, so the comparison is actually pretty close. (I would guess it would in principle be possible with a smaller ship if you'd do a WWII style straight deck and utilize the entire deck for launching and landing, though I guess that would limit operations rate too much so nobody wants to do that?)

For cost, I think I saw somewhere some estimates that the RN had calculated that equipping the Queen Elizabeths with catobar would have added IIRC ~$200M per boat. However one also needs to take into account the cost difference between the F-35 B and C variants. Searching around I found a figures from 2019 that said a B variant then went for $115.5M and a C for $107.7M (for comparison, the A model at $89M but I found newer figures from 2022 saying $80M). But if, hypothetically, the B model wouldn't exist production numbers for the C model would be higher and thus lower per unit costs. Lemme just spitball it and say $100M in 2019 for a C model in the hypothetical world without the B model. Per wikipedia the complement of a Queen Elizabeth is 36 F-35's. So (115.5-100)x36 = $558M, which is more than twice the cost of the catobar installation. Even if we assume no cost difference for the C model due to the disappearance of the B model, it's still (115.5-107.7)x36=$281M, still much higher than the price of the catobar installation. Not to mention that over the service life of the carrier probably many generations of planes would be used (or newer versions of F-35's, considering F-35 is expected to be a very long-lived platform).

I guess the crux of the argument is really what about those navies that want to operate baby carriers. If we assume a ~40kt Charles de Gaulle is about the minimum you wanna have for a 'proper' catobar carrier (maybe ~30kt if you really stretch it?), that leaves out all those 25kt helicopter carriers and whatnot.