I stand by my assertion that if your going to the trouble of building two 65,000 ton class CVs theres no point not putting a catapult on them. It may be penny wise but its pound foolish.
For 65,000 ton class carrier, probably, but all current STOBAR carriers are smaller than 65,000 tons:
- INS Vikramaditya - 45,400
- The biggest one (and oldest one) Kuznetsov ~55,000 fully loaded
- INS Vikrant - 40,000
Maybe I'm wrong, but you probably underestimate the complexity of catapult installation. Lets talk about
steam catapult. EMALS should be good but it is still under development.
First of all, steam catapult can be used as is only on carriers that have steam based propulsion (i.e. boilers or reactor), it would require a separate steam generator for gas turbine/disel powered ships. Another thing they are heavy and require lots of space:
Quoting:
Other drawbacks to the steam catapult include a high volume of 1133 m3, and a weight of 486 metric tons. Most of this is top-side weight that adversely impacts the ship's stability and righting moment. The large volume allocated to the steam catapult occupies "prime" real estate on the carrier. The steam catapults are also highly maintenance intensive, inefficient (4-6%)
So given the fact that you need at least two catapults it becomes significant. Also EMALS reduce the weight/volume, but it still only by factor of ~2. For a small carrier such costs are significant.
Also what about the operation costs, crew, complexity of operation, airframe wear, etc etc. So it looks like for a small carriers STOBAR may actually be a better option - that fills the gap between CATOBAR and STOVL, if not a better alternative to STOVL in general.