Don’t know the story behind them, but here’s another 3

The first one is a visibility experiment with a green top and a blue botton. The idea is that it would blend in with the foliage looking down and blend in with the sky looking up. Same principle with the Navy’s old dark blue top light blue bottom scheme, just replace the foliage with the sea.

Nonsense:
Rafale M had a 610 kg navalisation weight penalty,
keeping proportions: Sea Gripen will have ~400 kg weight increase over Gripen NG

http://www.aero.pub.ro/wp-content/themes/aero.pub.ro/uploads/JANE_S_ALL_THE_WORLD_S_AIRCRAF/JANE_S_ALL_THE_WORLD_S_AIRCRAF/jawa0257.htm
http://robotpig.net/aerospace-news/sea-gripen-for-india-_1601

With Rafale, its more like a weight savings. Its designed as a naval aircraft (which constitutes most of the design differences from the typhoon) and they made a lighter land version. That being said, Gripen’s airframe already has a lot in common with naval aircraft because of how the swedes operate and wouldn’t require as much strengthening. The only real concern would be the nose gear which retract aft.

Rafale can operate from Foch but it would make no sense to keep the existing catapult with the bridle system. For the price of a single Rafale or Gripen, you can probably do a complete refit.

The bridle system is on the aircraft, not the ship. The cat shuttle doesn’t care if its a bridle or launch bar.

Sadly, I don’t think this is over.

Either join the MTCR or ditch it, I say.

Anyone speculations on the juicy matter of the prospective Russian Aircraft Carrier? What do you think the design will be? Who will build it? What systems will it have? What aircraft will it carry? How many?

I have a strong hunch the final design will remain STOBAR like the Kuznetsov. A coventional design will require Russian to develop steam catapults from scratch(which would take too much time and money) or import them(which it won’t do). The fact that STOL capability being one of the features touted for the PAK-FA reaffirms my belief.

Considering Ulyanovsk was 40% complete, you’d assume they already have steam cat technology, just didn’t have a chance to impalement it.

I do find it anoying that the Pundits use the CVF contract as an example of the poor MOD procurement process without putting it into its correct context.

CVF was an example of poor procurement process, mostly because the civilians were constantly changing their mind about its budget.

I’d like to know what carriers around the world, planned or in service,
what weight of a/c they can launch ?
More specifically, which carriers are too small to operate F-35C loaded with say,
full tank & 5000 kg of ordnance ?

CdeG might be iffy for F-35. Anything big enough for full length 90m cats will have no problems. Weights have a lot to do with the aircraft more than the ship.

And will these smaller carriers be capable of operate N-LCA & Sea Gripen ?

Depends on whether they’re strengthened for CATOBAR. STOBAR takes up an insane amount room, so there is a limit to how small a STOBAR ship can be. CATOBAR, they could operate safely at full payload on something with 60m cats and 25,000 tons.

If the India deal doesn’t go through how much longer longer do you think the typhoon lines are going to be open.

if there going to pull the tonkers early wot was the point of scrapping the Harriers, surely if the Tornado is becoming such a high maintanence airframe it would have been better to keep the Harriers?

Tornadoes can’t go to sea. I think that had to play a part in the RAF’s reasoning.