The F-14/AWG/AIM-54 outlived their threat! While there are a few countries have aircraft that could launch a cruise missile attack, none can do so with a mass attack.

I realize the F-35B cannot be canceled for not only the USMC needs it but the Royal Navy and, the Italian navy’s carrier Cavour (under construction) also need it. The Spanish and Australian Navies are looking at the F-35 also.
While the price of the F-35B is going up, many countries are still interested because of the very low maintenance expense.

RN isn’t getting F35b anymore the UK is going with catapuilts for it’s carriers.

But we only have fifty cruise missiles.

Where on earth did you get that idea? The RAF bought hundreds of Storm Shadows.

Wonder if they can cross a Bronco with an Osprey for a Tilt Rotor COIN aircraft ?

How about one of these with some rocket pods?

Lt. Gen. Michael Hough, USMC deputy commandant for aviation, asked Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. to study arming the BA609 so that it could be used to escort V-22s.[13]

Sorry that sentence confused me : “The British authorities signed the contract with MBDA UK on Dec. 22, a DGA spokesman said.”

But I fought Meteor was a european missile with french funding as well so why do they need the British authorities to sign anything ?

Probably because MBDA UK are the prime contractor?

I was pretty pleased the MOD went for C over B it made a great deal more sense to me, now I’m even more pleased.

A good point, but in its current form, NSM will not fit within the F-35 weapons bay. A new Joint Strike Missile version of NSM is planned for that role. This will not have the tandem booster of the ship-launched version, but will have engineering changes that slim it down to match the limitations of the F-35 weapons bay.

Sorry if I wasn’t being clear but it was actually the new varient that I meant.

Is there much chance in the current financial climate that the MoD would spend this sort of money on making Storm Shadow capable of anti-shipping work?

There is an upgrade programme progressing for Storm Shadow at the moment, there were some details released about it under the whole Team Complex weapons press release in 2008. There was some mention of engine upgrades so probably better range, not sure what else is being included.

If this capability was included it would make it a very useful weapon (even more than it is already).

See what’s the point as you want to argue the obvious. Clearly, Russia would have loved to have Catapult Equipped Carriers. Yet, it didn’t want to expend the Resources, Time, and Technology needed to develop them. As it was overwhelmed with the complexities of the Design of the Aircraft Carrier and all the components that make it up. Though, as you said they would add them at a later stage.

Really, if catapults were so simple Russia was have easily included them into its design. As they can launch Naval Aircraft at much heavier weight. Which, offers the aircraft longer range and bigger payloads.

I would add that even France and the UK have purchased Catapults from the US instead of developing them on their own. Let’s not forget the all Modern US, French, and British Carriers have American Catapults. (you can likely add India to the list on the IAC-2)

That’s the point though isn’t it, the argument is obvious but you keep arguing against it. All this argument about catapuilts is irrelevant anyway, you don’t need them to launch an aircraft from a ship and the existence of STOBAR and STOVL carriers proves this thus reinforcing my original point; there is nothing that makes the building of aircraft carriers technologically demanding, complex yes, it’s the nature of the beast, technologically demanding, no.

You are displaying an impressive tunnel vision on the subject of catapuilts and the Kuznetsov, it was very obviously built for a different purpose to those of Western carriers (no matter how flawed it was), it’s not a US style supercarrier and was never intended to be such.

Which catapuilts has the UK has the UK bought from the US? Steam catapuilts were a British invention, we passed the technology to the US not the other way around, and all post war RN carriers that had catapuilts fitted were UK built, in the future we may buy EMALS from the US, this is not certain however due to the continued work by Converteam UK on EMCAT.