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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. |
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.