There is no such thing as being "rich enough" no one is ever rich enough certainly no defence budget is rich enough
When you have big navy bringing down the unit cost is paramount
It costs in excess of $7 million per day to keep a carrier strike group deployed on average if you have 4 CSG deployed per year which is typical of the USN that's more than $10 billion in operating costs alone let alone the overhauls and mid life upgrades
This is for a 4 Nimitz Class the price for 4 Ford Class would be 10% lower due it's better efficiency in fact a Ford Class over a 50 year cycle has a $4 billion saving over a 11 carrier fleet that's $44 billion in savings pretty much equivalent to 3-4 x Ford Class so you are getting 11 carriers for the price of 7-8
All electric system, EMALS and the absence of steam makes ships much more efficient which has long term benifits all world navy's knows this and everyone is getting intelligent how to save money while increasing the capability
Liaoning is not the best design and it's not most efficient so Chinas next carrier will bridge these gaps
Cats and Traps or EMALS for Chinas next carrier? Well that question no one knows I have tried to highlight the benifits of the latter
I think that is another issue you are talking about. - which in this case I would disagree that EMAL makes a ship more efficient.
But back to the point I was making, there is no hurt in taking insurance of developing a mature technology when there is uncertainty in the new technology. Every new technology sounds dandy and sweet but are always risks involved. Lets just take a very arbitrary fictitious case that if EMALs are successfully developed and some nerd found a way to track the magnetic signature - which people have been working on for a long time given the studies into shark's magnetic sensing (and that a magnetic field sufficient to launch a plane is quite powerful); would it not be a good to have backup to steam catapults?
We don't know if EMAL will have some crippling flaw, why not develop backup as an insurance? hey it could be a couple of a billion dollars, but compared to the cost of a possibly compromised carrier fleet?
Back to the question of efficiency; back to thermodynamic 101 "work" goes down a usefulness cascade; general rule is that the less levels of cascade, the more exergy is availble and less anergy is developed.
A nuclear reactor, steam catapult system follows this energy cascade:
Nuclear energy -> Thermal energy -> work
A nuclear reactor, EMALs system follows:
Nuclear energy -> Thermal Energy -> Electrical Energy -> work
practically speaking, EMALs maybe more efficient than last generation steam catapults, due to higher efficiency reactors, accumulators, generators and heat ex changers; but it would not be more efficient than a steam system built with the latest and the greatest technology.
Regarding the Ford/Nimitz study, well, all I can say is that all new hardware is supposed to be cheaper and do the job better than the previous generation; but my question is how many of these are within estimates? F35 is a classic example. So I will only take it as a grain of salt.
) they have smaller size then steam cats, need less maintenance, have even acceleration and could launch heavier or lighter aircraft then steam cats .