Maybe. Retired Rear Admiral George E. Jessen argued way back in 1995 that most modern strike fighters—thanks to higher thrust-to-weight ratios and vectoring nozzles—no longer need catapults.

The Navy says an F/A-18 fighter jet slipped off the hanger deck of an aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East, as sailors were towing the aircraft into place in the hangar bay of the USS Harry S.

Fighter aircraft have landed aboard Japan’s newest aircraft carrier for the first time. A Lockheed Martin F-35B from the US Navy’s (USN’s) Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 successfully ...