Reply to post:

before they get pushed off to let the F-35 do the same.

Trump's moved ahead on many of his far more controversial promises. Why does anybody think that F35B is going to continue? USMC can be mollified by giving them some other toys, like more troops or ships, and then the only people who want the F35B are the sad-sacks of Whitehall who dreamt up the idea of building two enormous carriers without catapults.

BAES would of course love that outcome, because they then get to charge another $2bn for sticking on EMALS or retrofitting some botched boiler plus steam catapult arrangement. Plenty of opportunity for more procurement bungling by MoD both with the catapults, and with the revised contract to buy F35Cs (because there's no way they'd take the more sensible F18 option). Or worse still, they'll ask BAES to re-engineer the unwanted Tranche 1 Typhoons for carrier operations, which will give the RN an even less suitable aircraft, with an excess of interceptor performance, low suitability for low level and strike duties, and all the challenges of making the airframe capable of catapult launch.

So there's my bet: The worst and most expensive of all possible outcomes - retrofit steam boilers and catapults on the carriers, and mis-use of unsuitable aircraft designed for totally different purposes..