JonesyYeah absolutely good sense……apart from:
a) the fact that the carriers are massively overbudget already, owing to government incompetence, and adding another 30% to the build costs upfront is going to make the picture even more disasterous for those in the anticarrier lobby.
b) We dont actually have the Fleet Air Arm established to provide the front line squadrons and OCU to support the CATOBAR deployment at the moment and we would need to pay quite a lot upfront to stand up Culdrose or Yeovilton to house even just two frontline CATOBAR sdns plus the OCU. This as you can be damned sure the light blue arent going to pay to support F-35C or, even worse, Rafale on one of their bases unless they have some guiding hand in their deployment.
c)Carrier Strike…the actual requirement that is driving the acquisition of the capability doesnt demand CATOBAR. Carrier Strike positions fleet air defence and sea control as a secondary tasking and does not justify any of the mission creep of trying to make the CVF a fleet carrier by the back door. On the proviso that F-35B meets its projected performance figures there is nothing unachieveable with the STOVL hull that is defined in Carrier Strike.
….apart from those small points yeah good sense! :rolleyes:
JonesyIt uses the Ultra HIDL (http://www.ultra-cis.com/resourses/Fireshadow%20LM%20-%20secured.pdf). Basically LPI with comms relay for Beyond LoS with mux functionality for multiple weapon control.
At normal operating ranges circa 100km though, barring terrain masking, you are still in LoS at 2000ft from a 10m masthead so predominantly ops seem intended to be LoS until target commit and terminal phase.
JonesyA more realistic question is: what gives the carrier the most “future-proofing”, allowing us to put on it pretty much anything we could eventually think of in the next 50 years?
The answer is not STOVL even if, of course, short termism and financial difficulties can still bring STOVL forwards despite all other considerations bringing towards the other choice.
Sorry Liger but this is absolutely the clearest example of the problem we face I’ve seen. You are talking of future proofing when its not established that we’ll even get two operational hulls in the fleet. What possible value is there in considering the configuration of the carrier in 50yrs when it may be confirmed within the next 50 months that the EMALS cost has pushed the project to a tipping point.
The whole problem IS short term…if we do not solve it there will be NO long term to worry about!. If STOVL addresses the short term problems isnt it, by your own words above, the clear solution?. The ‘other considerations’ are utterly, wholly and totally meaningless and irrelevent if the carriers get cancelled or one sold off as the price of CATOBAR.
STOVL need not be the be-all and end-all of RN Carrier Strike development, but, it should be an important waypoint on that development path. The only issue with it are the remaining questions regarding the viability of the airframe…if those get bottomed out it is, simply, the optimal near-mid term choice. The support-type issues mentioned on this thread are spurious and soluable, with existing technology – according to the OEMs, without recourse to CATOBAR and that is about the only realistic operational handicap between STOVL and CATOBAR.
Long term, with the future-proofing in its proper context, CATOBAR may be required to support larger and more capable UAV’s etc. The price for that only needs paying when we need it and when we can afford it though. That is not right now.
JonesyHow many targets, how many missiles? We have a small stock. We have few deployable launchers.
We have a modest stock and a small target set. The opposing fighter force is modest and the number of bases they could launch from, with any sense of maintaining a significant strike tempo, are similarly limited. As are the operational goals, like I said, we need to attrite and disrupt for a specific time period. We will have the force mix to accomplish that.
You missed my point. If we have n weapons of class x, we can hit up to n targets. If there are more than n targets, we can’t hit them all.
Again I think you are massively overestimating the target set. AFV’s, trucks, towed weapons, etc all carry a logistics burden there is a finite number of units that will be supportable by the logistics bridge into the islands. That number will not be large owing to the constraints that exist in that regard. Sudden increases in logistics capability will be an immediate red flag to the UK….it will be no secret to anyone that we would keep an interested eye on developments in that regard. PGM inventories should be the very least of our issues.
No you aren’t. You’re assuming a projected post-2020 British force structure that requires us to complete at least one carrier, equip it & operate it. While I hope that comes to pass, it’s not our current force structure.
Seeing the whole point of the thread is CVF I thought the assumption that CVF is involved would be a fairly safe one.
Now you’re being silly. They don’t need that lot to be able to find & attack our carrier(s). SSNs? When we’ll be operating in the South Atlantic, within fighter range of the Falklands? CVAs? What for? Ditto the escorts.
I’m not though…we will be in fighter range of the Falklands but able to strike from sufficient range, even with the poor hobbled F-35B, to give the opposition a huge swath of sea space to have to search to find us. The advantages are all with us UNLESS they create a force which poses an unsustainable threat and jeopardises our theatre entry and theatre manoeuvre capability. That would be a CVA group of their own. Simply put if they stage a CVA group out, and we ignore it, we risk it destroying our fleet train or it using its mobility to negate ours. SSNs/Escorts are simply as they have no answer to our Fleet boats.
Nor do they need that lot to be able to survive (albeit severely weakened) the biggest TLAM strike we could launch with our currently projected SSN force.
Again there is no question they will survive a dozen missiles or so coming in on 3 or 4 airbases simultaneously. That would disrupt air ops at those facilities though which is all we need to do.
You sensibly suggested that we could use carrier-launched UAVs. Two can play at the UAV game. So, one gets close enough to our carrier group for us to shoot it down. That gives them useful information. And so on.
Absolutely but an opfor UAV force will have to catch us at standoff ranges before we can get the CASOM F-35B’s in range. To stage them out that far is going to require a fair bit of satellite bandwidth or a hell of a signal relay platform. Again maritime recon capable UAV’s and new satellite bandwidth would be something noteworthy.
You posited an almost loss-free (on our side) turkey shoot, in which the hapless & entirely passive Argentineans would participate solely as targets. That, to me, is asking for trouble. One must always try to imagine how one would counter oneself, if in the other bloke’s shoes. Trying to build a copy of the RN combined with a copy of the Russian AD system is probably not the best way.
I outlined, in a few sentences, the differences in how we fought one war and how it would be fought with proper kit!. It wasnt a full OpPlan Swerve!. The purpose of planning and introducing systems into your military is to give your forces exactly that turkey shoot you mention though. Its not a matter of under-estimating the opposition its a matter of putting the combat elements in play that allow the oppositions response to be reduced as a threat. Hard to see how a dozen A-4AR’s or Mirage 2000’s based on the islands without AEW for example could get in the way of a determined F-35B/CASOM strike serial.
Jonesy. And there likely won’t be serious competition for many years still, so, wasn’t for the cost, the “old” E2D would still be, unquestionably, the best solution of all.
Again thats just not the case. E-2 does not address any ISTAR mission requirement of UK Carrier Strike. You arent going to send out a Hawkeye to put persistent surveillance over a pre-surveyed TBM launch site ashore, a key road junction that an opposing ground force would have to transit or any kind of target that isnt a blue water surface group or an air threat. The point of Hawkeye is AWACS…a job its very good at….its not enough to support Carrier Strike though. Why you would want two distinct platforms to do full-spectrum ISTAR in a carrier air wing, especially when one obliges you to spend £2bn on catapults that you dont need for any other reason, I have no idea?!.
As a matter of fact, there is not a single UAV at the moment carrying a big, powerful AEW radar such as that of Hawkeye. Indeed, there’s not a drone flying with even just a Searchwater 2000/Cerberus equivalent system. They are not even on the drawing boards, nor on the horizon.
Guardian is flying operationally with Raytheons SeaVue XMC right now. SV, as an I band search set with a claimed 200nm range against a destroyer sized surface contact against clutter, is an analagous set to Searchwater MR. Searchwater MR being essentially the same set as the AEW variant on ASaC7 in the system backend just with a different antenna.
The Global Hawk BAMS has much still to prove, and is not an AEW, but a surface search asset anyway. It also is unsuited to carrier ops.
Guardian being a variation on the GA Mariner BAMS competitor platform….a UAV that GA did do the concept workup for as a carrier capable platform.
But the UAV future really kind of goes in favor of EMALS, cables and F35C. Once you’ve go a catapult that can regulate the power it launches with, and potentially fire in the air up to 45 tons of mass, you are more that reasonably covered for 50 or more years of development in aerospace technology.
Wide ranges of UAVs will be aided by EMALS, but, that isnt the issue at hand is it?. The question is can you get credible, better-than-rotary, organic airborne electronic support without having to have a fully paid-up CATOBAR capability on your flat-top. According to General Atomics claims for Mariner and Converteams claims for EMKIT the answer is yes.
Also because you can piggy-back on the USN money and development efforts by adopting their systems and solutions.
The USN have no need to deploy a MALE-lite solution like Mariner or a navalised Mantis from a non-CATOBAR deck. Most of their targetting support is generated from strategic platforms or ‘national technical means’. There are nations out there without the CATOBAR decks and satellites though who could see a paradigm shift in their theatre ISTAR generation capability converting their smaller decks to operate this kind of slow-mover, persistent, air vehicle. Piggy backs can be great, but, you rarely get all the way to were you are going being carried by someone else!.
JonesyKev
CVF has a 70m wide deck, and Mantis (since we’ve been talking about it) has a 20m+ wingspan, so it’s fairly obvious that a aircraft with wings down is compeletely obscuring use of the ramp for F35b. This is okay if things go to plan constantly but then quite often they don’t.
Again though you are talking about aircraft with endurances of 20-odd hours. Even if one gets itself all depressed halfway through its patrol and plunges into the ocean you are talking about a single launch event for the replacement 10hrs or so after the last EMKIT evolution and 10hrs until you have to spot the next patrol series. It really should not be that problematic to manage the shuffle at that low a frequency of launch/land cycles.
Also since you’ve been talking about converting the CVF to CATOBAR in the future I’d like to point out you’re talking about adding EMKIT where the waist catapuilt would replace it. It seems a little risking to me to cut big holes in the deck for new kit, then ripping it out again making a bigger one for bigger kit in the future.
I would have thought it almost convenient to have established EMP shielding, cable runs and a pre-existing deck opening to expand on to prepare the waist position for the ‘new’ EMCAT installation to be honest.
The whole point here though, and cap is doffed to Liger with his observation that this is currently not on the cards in any confirmed public space, is to make the observation that lack of the full EMALS suite doesnt mean that rotaries are the only option for Electronic support for a STOVL CVF.
That not only has a comparable MALE UAV flown operationally with a representative theatre surveillance radar in the shape of Guardian, but, that Mantis offers all that Guardian does with the added benefit of two engines. All that and the fact that a proven, lightweight, launcher system exists to allow for the deployment of the MALE type UAV discussed from a fair sized flight deck.
This requires little further imagination to connect the dots and see the potential capabilities that even current tech could deliver, on a STOVL hull, without recourse to heavy spend on CATOBAR upfront and whole-life.
JonesyHow many TLAMs do we get in a rush order before this all starts? And how many submarines can we deploy to fire them? What targets on those air bases do we hit? What about the civilian airfields used for dispersal?
There are a goodly number of auxilliary fields around Ushuaia and Rio Grande with the logistics infrastructure to support high tempo combat air ops???. Rio Gallegos and Comodoro Rivadavia maybe they could disperse, but, that just means knocking back their own optempo and thinning out already scarce GBAD doesnt it. If you use a civillian airstrip for combat ops its not a civillian strip anymore is it?. Besides we are not needing to wipe those facilities off the face of the earth….we need them disrupted for the few days while we pick off threat systems on the islands…no more. Targetting base ops facilities and personnel does that.
The possession of a class of weapon does not necessarily mean that we’re capable of destroying every target that class of weapon is usable against. We must count the number of targets, the number of weapons, & the number of launch platforms.
Yes it does…the operative word being ‘capable’…it is unlikely that we would be able to find every one we’d wish to strike but a weapon hidden every time a plane is overhead is not an effective weapon if we keep the planes going overhead! Plain old passive attrition that one. That is a function of sortie rates…something that is a key driver for how CVF is designed.
You’re also assuming that at the hypothetical future date (2020s?) when we have the ability to do what you describe, we still have the same technological lead we have now.
I’m assuming current force structures. If Argentina suddenly turns round and dumps several tens of billions into a comprehensive IADS with seamless aerial radar coverage, hardened comms links and multilayer SAM belts plus a naval rebuilding programme of cutting edge escorts, SSNs and a couple of medium weight CVA’s then, yes, I accept that my suggestion would be wholly inadequate. That said though I’d make the contention that we might notice such rampant militarisation and funding for CATOBAR, UAV’s, more Astutes, more escorts etc, etc might suddenly be viewed differently by the incumbent government of the day!.
As there is no suggestion that Argentina is about to go for regional superpower status, despite the disgruntled rhetoric regarding the Islands, it would seem prudent to actually let them start building up their threat before we spend billions to counter it!.
JonesyOnly if you fight the war in the half-assed way we fought CORPORATE!. Remember we had a fleet principally configured for blue-water ASW and had a submariner in overall command…its a widely appreciated view that the war was won only because we had the people who knew how to misuse their equipment in the most beneficial fashion!.
Fought again, properly equipped and with a bit more of a clue about exped warfare, we TLAM the airbases that those airstrikes and, more importantly, Argentine maritime patrol capability were/is generated from. Political considerations go out the window we have the tools to reduce the threat to the fleet so we bloody well use them.
We then stand off 500nm and CASOM hit every C3I node, radar site, ordnance/POL depot we can identify on the islands and systematically reduce the airbase. Then, and only then when the access denial systems are attrited, we close to a couple of hundred miles and put in high intensity ops to finish off the mobile systems and any collaterol-sensitive targets with EPW and Brimstone such that every SAM, artillery piece, AFV, bunker and truck that is exposed is hit. After THAT we close again and let the WAH-64’s go in and mop up with 3Cdo and light infantry.
Simply put we dont HAVE troop carriers sat in San Carlos water requiring the kind of Fleet Air Defence you describe as, fought properly, the presence of Op forces on the islands is made untenable almost before the landing force is in range of the islands. There is just no need to sit the carrier there fat, dumb and happy with an E-2 up inviting the whole Argentine airforce to come out and try it on!. We can fight smarter than that now.
JonesyDunno about that all I’ve seen from the RAF for the past decade is something along the lines of: “Don’t want carrier, don’t want to be involved in carrier, they’re taking our funding”. You’ve also stated yourself in the past that RAF personnel have been very opposed to deploying on carriers, I just can’t see them really getting involved with any enthusiasm and I’m sure they will argue that Reapers could be continued to be operateed from Creech because it will be lower cost, even if it can’t be deployed from Sea.
Especially after the Libya ops the RAF contention that reach and AAR offsets naval air has been proven to be a lot less solid than advertised. The very clear gap in the French contribution and ours has been noticed and the light blue are aware of that. They have a gain to make from playing and 35B certainly replaces the short field deployment ability they lost with GR9. Easier sell than the alternate.
I still think you’re over-egging the size difference of EMKIT to EMALS, it still looks like taking up a fairly big chunk of the deck for me.
The plan view attached shows why thats not the case. The emkit is mounted where the ‘waist’ cat would be on the catobar hull. Using a double length run, compared to the test article, for illustration but, to be honest, you could triple or quadruple the length with little consequence. The only thing that emkit will disrupt will be rotary ops…possibly…for the short window once a day when you are firing off uav’s.
JonesyWhile I agree that a UAV able to operate from carriers is desirable it still isn’t funded in any way shape or form, and the requirements from MASC is still unresolved as well, and I’ve read at least one MOD source to have recently stated still unfunded.
Agreed, but, there are at least multiple requirements that could arrive at a very similar air vehicle as a solution. While there is equally no funding for a rotary or E-2 based MASC solution I’d be optimistic that the UAV approach will at least get a fair appraisal. I have heard rumours linking SCAVENGER to an afloat capability as well.
We might see common sense prevail and any future UAVs developed as a result of the recent agreements with France be carrier capable, but I wouldn’t bet on it, the RAF will do everything it can to prevent it from happening arguing on cost grounds.
This is where I absolutely disagree Kev. If anything Mantis/Telemos and F-35B deals the light blue back into the game. Who’s out at Creech playing with the Reapers now?. ISTAR is going to be a real ‘purple’ game and all three services will bring something to the table to maximise effect. The F35B lets us use RAF facilities and, at a pinch, pilots and gives them a wider rapid deployment capability than they would have with GR4/Typhoon…everyones a winner. Best way to stop interservice opposition here is to make the others stakeholders in Carrier Strike and let them realise what it can do for them. We stay on the course of F-35C and Hawkeye and we cant surprised if the Army turns round and says ‘cute….but what does it do for my guys’!.
But regardless of this I still see carrier capable UAVs as more likely with a CATOBAR carrier rather than developing some STOVL/STOBAR hybrid solution.
A wider range of UAV’s and UCAVs in the future yes….again I agree. That is a bit nebulous though when we are looking at what the carriers will do from ‘day 1’ as it were. Right now we need to meet the Carrier Strike requirement and provide the best ISTAR possible for the smallest amount of money using the hulls being built. Thats not a description for CATOBAR.
Sorry but I definitely do see it as having a significant impact on the rest of the flightdeck, it would at the very least require the installation of arrestor gear. Have you seen the T26 concept video? It shows what appears to be a Scan Eagle or something very similar; a small UAV operated off a tiny capauilt with a pretty low footprint, nothing like what you’re suggesting.
I dont mean exactly like the T26 Kev!. I’m not suggesting the T26 will sport a 30m EMKIT :D!. What I’m saying is that tacking on a 30m EMKIT to launch the only 4 UAV’s in that days flying programme is not going to be anywhere analagous to putting in a full-size high-power catapult for regular CATOBAR ops through the programme. My meaning was that, on a deck the size of CVF’s, such an EMKIT installation would be analagous to the T26 setup….a small UAV launcher!.
JonesyOf course the elephant in the room with this is that there is no requirement for this at present, it would require hundreds of millions to create these UAVs, tens of millions to see the launch method reach production standard, and still require conversion of CVF as well, probably a couple of hundred more millions just to turn them into a hybrid STOBAR/STOVL carrier with one launch method for fighters and another for UAVs.
Any potential foreign sales of these UAVs also require other customers, if they can be found, to convert their own carriers into hybrids as well.
Not strictly true Kev MASC is, last time I checked, still on the books and SOLOMON/SCAVENGER covers the old brief from DABINETT to advance UK ISTAR. MALE UAV’s of the type outlined definitely falls under those requirements. You could even say that a single type, such as Mantis/Telemos, covering an array of roles for land or sea based ISTAR represents the most efficient approach possible over the long term. The alternate of a Hawkeye/MALE UAV or rotary/MALE UAV for MASC/SOLOMON would seem a touch absurd.
As shown by the US Guardian adaptation from MQ9/Mariner once you have the airframe you can make it fit all sorts of requirements. We certainly face question marks over the future of maritime patrol around home waters…how useful could it be to deploy the same MALE UAV for that tasking that we use to find insurgents in Afghan, that we use to support Carrier Strike afloat etc.
Seeing that a rotary solution to replace the baggies Sea Kings would require development money, that Hawkeye would cost billions to deliver as a solution and that both of those options offer nothing close to the MALE UAV flexibility, to me, this becomes a real no-brainer. That the launch method for this class of UAV is developed, de-risked, and all but ready for deployment just adds to that.
I’m not sure that the inclusion of a light, short run, catapult such as EMKIT would need a re-classification of the carrier as a hybrid exactly either. This isnt like adding a pair of full size 90m cats at the waist as per the Ul’Yanovsk design or anything akin to it. If you look at the T26 concept work there is mention of a UAV launching system in that. This would be more analagous to that sort of set up. Again with UAV endurances of 20hrs upwards the flying programme isnt going to be heavy on catapult operation.
Edit: Does this sort of UAV support STOVL?. Absolutely as it shows you dont need the full cat/trap setup to deploy ISTAR capability as it used to be when the only options were rotary or Hawkeye. Now you can put in a light catapult on a STOVL or STOBAR deck and get persistent theatre-level ISTAR without having to make the step up to full CATOBAR ops.
JonesyThe ‘extra range’ of the F-35C is not about deeper strike range IMHO, it is about longer endurance on CAP missions first and foremost. In the Falklands, Sea Harriers on CAP could only stay on station for as little as ten minutes due to the Carriers having to remain as far to the east of the islands as possible to stay out of SuE/Exocet range. Gaps in CAP coverage were exploited by the Argentines (who were tracking SHARs on radar) added to the lack of RN AEW cover, meant ships and lives were lost unnecessarily. The Lightning may or may not be a great dogfighter, but it will be an excellent BVR interceptor providing outer zone coverage for the fleet.
There is one issue with this though Obi – F-35B is no SHAR. It has the range performance of Hornet C and CASOM carry to extend that for strike. Taking the popular theme of a recapture of the Falklands the CASOM strike range of F-35B means the carrier has near 400,000 sq nautical miles of sea room to launch strikes from if we only consider the hemisphere east of the islands!. The circumstances of Sea Harriers leading hostile forces back to mother are hardly fitting to F-35B!.
Establish a ‘picket line’ of passive MALE UAV’s below the radar horizon from shore air search sets (remember, from a 60ft high shore antenna, 200nm downrange the radar horizon is over 20,000ft!) to catch and localise anything coming out sweeping a surface search set or beaconing on a TDL and, with high sortie and deck launch rates, you have a hell of a capability to prosecute whilst denying signature to the opponent…which is the name of the game. If you have a persistent, passive, sensor screen up and a DLI pair spotted isnt the dependence on CAP diminished regardless?.
Then there is that final point about endurance that the CATOBAR bird must always leave enough juice in the tanks for the bolter or three. If air-air only F-35B is light loaded and wont even need to SRL. Hard to bolter when you can stop before you land!. Doesnt offset the F-35C’s additional tankage etc, but, it does make a bit more fuel useable if pushed for that extra few minutes on station.
Fed,
SSDR 2010 stated “One carrier converted”…”one into reserve unconverted”! I don’t like that personally but that was what the SSDR set out as the way forward!
Very true, but, I think there is a quiet groundswell of opinion forming that its another ‘Typhoons gun’ situation. An obviously imbecilic concept that will quietly be rectified as and when the appropriate funding is found to allow it to be shown for the imbecilic concept everyone always knew it was but couldnt do anything about at the time!.
JonesyCan you just clarify your point Jonesy as I am struggling to understand it.
As for getting our money back if we pull out of JSF program…not a chance.
The point is Fed that, according to this information from the Yanks, we’ve now got an approximate cost for the shift from STOVL to CATOBAR which is going to be north of £2bn whole-life for both ships…should both be so fitted….which as we all know they will have to be to get more than, what, about 200 operational days a year.
So its £2bn extra, on top of all the other government-deposited non-design costs, for capability not identified in the Carrier Strike Key User Requirements. It really is classic mission-creep leading to unsupportable cost hikes.
Carrier Strike specs a vessel capable of generating high sortie rate precision strike effects ashore with secondary LPH/assault roles. Nothing that requires 700nm of reach etc, which is no shocker because we cant organically target at that depth and getting there with a strike-loaded manned fighter still means a 70 minute lag in the target to shoot cycle. If we have fixed target sets, at that range, we hit with TLAM anyway because we dont want our manned fighters on a 3hr round trip well beyond our coverage when airframe numbers are limited!.
Its the old disease of gold-plate over good enough and thats a mistake that we really should not still be making by this point.
JonesyRead Obi’s comment to say that F-35 was off the table. If there is going to be no workshare or a very significantly reduced one its entirely proper for us to recover that money.
If thats not what was being said fair play. It still leaves us pushing back the investment in CATOBAR until a point when they are required. That is not now…UNLESS F-35B folds owing to service frailty. That is service frailty extra and over that experienced by types like F-14A etc.
JonesyI don’t believe it will be that expensive and it won’t jeopardise the project. STOVL at 65000 tonnes means a one trick pony with a lot of wasted potential. Carriers aren’t just about strike aircraft, Just as important are the AEW, ASW, COD, SAR, all of which are much more capable when CATOBAR capable platforms are used instead of STOVL.
CATOBAR:
AEW=Hawkeye / UAV
ASW=Merlin / UAV
COD=Greyhound
SAR=Merlin/LynxSTOBAR:
AEW=Merlin ASaC
ASW=Merlin
COD=Merlin
SAR=MerlinLPH capability remains unaffected whichever way you go of course. Also if F-35B gets canned, you are left with a couple of oversized LPHs. If the ‘C gets canned, there are alternatives (Rafale, Super Hornet).
Carrier Strike IS about strike aircraft though. EMALS is, literally, an extra £2bn to do something that the requirement doesnt call for. Thats every description of mission creep that there is and that is a time honoured way to kill programmes.
If F-35B is canned we ask for the £2bn investment we’ve put in to the aircraft back and use that to put EMALS in to the first hull available at an immediate refit period. EMALS can be put in at any time. There will be refit costs at that point…little different to now…and a time lag, but, we’ll need that time to get an initial cadre of deck qualified pilots and RN crews up to speed anyway and it means we are not spending money until we need to.
It could be that in 20 years the threat situation has changed and we will have a need for the Fleet Carrier you are describing to contest blue water. Even if STOVL has performed well to that point it may be we do suddenly need the extra few hundred miles STOVL denies. So, at that time, perhaps STOVL gives way to EMALS. With a higher threat environment budgets are more likely to be permissive. Until then where is the need?.
The list you put in is telling. The only real differences are in COD and AEW. COD we are not going to have to worry too much about as our single carrier battle group will be a prime focus for the RFA and we’ve managed fairly adequately without Greyhound for a long time. Even in the heady days of the Cold War FAA the COD Gannets weren’t really on a par and we got by ok.
As for AEW Hawkeye is a monolithic, legacy, solution. Nice to have perhaps, but, no reason to spend £2bn on catapults then another billion on planes. Spend a fraction on high endurance UAVs and you have not only AEW, but, distributed persistent multi-sensor platforms covering the full range of ISTAR taskings at sea and ashore as we’ve already covered on the thread. The kind of support that Carrier Strike actually requires….not coverage against Clancy’s fantasy Backfires!.
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