Politics. It's a very murky world, where the right thing only happens by accident, never by design. The 2010 SDSR changed the CVF project from two STOVL carriers to one CATOBAR and one immediately mothballed mega LPH. SecDef at the time, Dr Liam Fox was one of the few Tory politicians who actually understood Defence, most British Pollys have absolutely no idea what the armed forces do, or indeed why we still have them when WW2 ended so long ago!
Fox knew that the best 'bang for Buck would be via CATOBAR and F-35C, but Chancellor Osbourne was from the start out to cut huge sums from every department's budget. the whole 'only one carrier to be commissioned and the other mothballed' was a way of making the treasury think they had their pound of flesh, whislt keeping both ships in the building programme. Converting a second carrier to CATOBAR at a later date (early 2020s) was always on Fox's agenda and the MODs, but obviously it was not publicly mentioned officially lest the Treasury realised they had been duped. So far, so good, two new carriers for the RN which had escaped the axe. Carriers though are linked to the aircraft they carry...
...Enter developmental problems for the F-35C (tailhook related). To those in the know, nothing special, Big headlines scaring the ignorant and exaggerated beyond belief. IOC dates then start slipping mysteriously to the right (2018 became 2020, then 2023 and finally 2030!). The costs of conversion also started to mysteriously inflate beyond belief, without any substantive evidence being presented. The USN priced the cost of conversion at £458million per ship for equipment (EMALS and AAG) with installation costing another £400million. But on this side of the pond the cost per ship suddenly became £2Billion+ per ship! (£3Billion for QE herself). Simply unbelievable.
Because it was all nonsense.
Fox was ousted from the MOD because he rubbed other Tories up the wrong way, and was stupid enough to bring in a close friend as an unofficial advisor and let him into meetings he was not authorised to, in prefference to officials from the MOD. Replaced at short notice by Phillip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, known to be good at admin and balancing the books (he is strongly tipped to be the next Chancellor). He has miraculously eliminated the MOD's £38Billion 'Black Hole' in next to no time (because it never existed in the first place). Actually it was essentially composed of the £20Billion for Trident replacement, which was previously funded not by the MOD but directly from the Treasury. Osbourne changed that in 2010. Also there was the Army's FRES programme (Future Rapid Effects System,- don't you just love military acronyms? It basically covers all the Army's future combat vehicles other than tanks), costed at around £18Billion. Funny how those two add up to £38Billion...
2012, and Hammond is under pressure to come up with a few Billion more in savings. The CATOBAR conversion programme needs to be funded around now, so it comes into the firing line. But a U-turn is difficult to justify, so a case has to be built/fabricated. BAe systems see the lie of the land and jump aboard Hammond's bandwagon (fabricating the sky high costs of conversion in the process). Why? because they have a large investment in the Lightning II, especially the 'B. The projected delay to the service entry of the 'C meant there ws a possibility that the Lightning order would be cancelled in favour of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, being much cheaper and available now (and a plane which BAe has no financial interest in). The '35B however would mean STOVL carriers which could not take the Hornet, safeguarding BAe's business. The RAF also jumped aboard because they simply do not want the Hornet, they want the Lightning because it has Stealth, preserving their deep strike capability. The RN jumped aboard the U-turn bandwagon because I suspect they were promised that in return BOTH carriers would be commissioned instead of just one. SO different reasons for the same decision. Ulterior motives aplenty. The RAF is still talking as if the F-35Bs will be a wholly land based asset replacing the Tornado GR4s directly. The Navy has the rump of it's Harrier pilots in the US training on Super Hornets (9 pilots now, to be joined soon by 4 more) at NAS LeMoore, to gain the necessary experience in all round carrier ops. It is currently believed that the JFL (Joint Force Lightning) will have at least two NAS as well as two frontline RAF sqns and an OCU.
A further U-turn back to CATOBAR is highly unlikely now because it will just turn the whole process into Farce; a change of government to Labour in 2015 won't do it as they supported STOVL from the start. Unless the B gets cancelled there will be no cats and traps for the QEC for at least a decade.
