France's reliance on American catapult infrastructure illustrates the cost of supporting CATOBAR operations at limited national production scale. Maintenance facilities and supporting systems are expensive to establish, and rebuilding them after abandonment is especially difficult. Successive government design changes added cost to the Queen Elizabeth programme, while treating the catapult choice like an optional fitting overlooked the infrastructure required. Complete national infrastructure would buy logistical and political independence at a higher price. A cheaper system could create greater dependence, leaving governments inclined toward compromises between the two.
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The infrastructure cost of CATOBAR independence
Choosing catapults requires a support system whose cost and political dependencies extend beyond the carrier.