Skijump CATOBAR

[BoxOfRoundRocks]

Just thought about it. Launching Cat aircraft like Hornet or Rafale from bow catapult at skijump. Would have benefits from both systems but might cause excessive stress on airframe? Why don't we have this already?

[Karle94]

There is no need. The cat is enough.

[Trojan]

Or the Skijump is enough, if not as good for the job.

[erik_t]

It's also not feasible to have a curved-rail steam catapult. Such a concept would not be feasible until the electromagnetic-shuttle catapult.

So I suppose it's possible we'll see it in the future, but I would not hold my breath. If you've gone through the trouble of installing a catapult already, it's probably not saving you much to install a half-strength one in a ski-jump.

[Karle94]

Cat is better at launching planes. No ski-jump carrier can launch their planes fully fueled and fully laden, they are too small for that. With a cat, you don`t have that problem.

[Trojan]

True, but its a lot less expensive, so its a tradeoff. Though if you gonna build a carrier big enough to launch full size fighter jets, you should probably be prepared to invest in catapults, as your already spending a huge amount of money regardless.

[BoxOfRoundRocks]

Skijump brings safety in take off as aircraft is send out high in sky and that gives pilot vital seconds to eject if things go wrong and power is lost. Catobar enables much higher take off weights but has much less error marginal for pilot right after launch. If catapult is a straight one currently in use and skijump starts after cat ends, would it be technically possible?

Maybe nations like Russia, India or China could come up with this ad they operate STOBAR jets. If i recall correctly russia had a carrier program with ski jump in bow for fighters and a cat in waist for AEW planes.

[RP1]

Well, you could arrange a steam accelerator with a ramp at the end, but that means you loose deck area because (1) you can't park aircraft on the ramp and (2) the accelerator will extend further aft and could interfere with the landing area.

Ramps also cause turbulence on the flight deck, but this can be mitigated by careful design.

As has been noted, it's not really needed - a carrier large enough to carry fighters requiring accelerators is probably high enough that the extra height and time given by the ramp is not needed. The other important and frequently forgotten thing is that STO runs are longer (in time and distance) than CATO and thus there is a chance that the carrier will have pitched down by the time the aircraft gets to the bow - the ramp guarantees that the aircraft will always have a positive ascent rate, which is reassuring. Consider USMC LHA, for which deck space is important but operations in heaving north Atlantic swells are not - they do not have ramps.

Where a combination of accelerator and ramp might be useful is in a small UCAV carrier, as they have much lower freeboard and due to crew limitations would probably not engage in such intensive air operations anyway, so a slightly less efficient flight deck layout might not be such a problem. In that case, you'd be talking about a EMCAT or EMKIT, so a curved track would be possible.

RP1

[BoxOfRoundRocks]

Good points gentlemen. Very enlighting experience.