the waist section being used for recovery, there is no way to put a ski jump on those cats unless you ask pilots who miss to ski jump again on the fly
I think you possibly will see ski jumps with EM cats in their USMC assault carriers and arrestor wires put. That way , you could possibly get rid of the F35B and just have the A and B versions. Capability increases, one model less,longer production run, more profit, lower cost .. etc. etc . Brits could adopt that too , along with the rest of Naval Sea Harrier users.
A carrier to have a full capability should be able to sustain air ops for 24 hrs in different sectors in different missions at the same time. Wondering whether a compliment of 20 multi-role a/c could do that. During the AG negotiations..a section of IN officers were not so happy with AG capabilites as it gives only marginal increase(in capability) in consideration with previous a/c carriers that India operated. And that weighs ~ 40k
Frankly, the AG sucks. Remember, it was a cruiser primarily ,with some "hybrid" VTOL/ Helicopter carrying capability. The hanger doesnt extend the full length of the ship and is very small. It was never a carrier with a clean sheet design. The Viraat at around 25K ton displacement carries 30 planes. A clean sheet design like the Charles De Gaulle carries 45 aircraft or so , which by any measure is a sizeable foce, with around 30 or so being multi role aircraft and the rest like choppers and AEW aircraft. So really I think 3 40K ton carriers will be fine for India. AG carries 15 to 20 aircraft less than what it ideally should if it were a clean sheet design.
