John Dallman wrote:
[snip]
On the other hand, replacing a steam catapult with a linear accelerator,
that pulls an aircraft along on convention wheels is much less silly.
That's ben discussed, vaguely, for the forthcoming cancellation of the
Royal Navy's CVF. That ship concept doesn't feature a steam plant,
replacing it with gas turbines driving electric generators, plus electric
motors turning the propellers. With that, using the electric plant to
catapult aircraft make sense. However, if they get built, the plan is to
carry STOVL JSF, and use a ski-jump rather than catapults. So the idea
hasn't been studied in much detail, to the best of my knowledge.

They've already build working models and the system is going into new
USN carriers in the next few years.

--
Tom Schoene lid
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