I've always wondered: what is the competitive advantage of deploying these new catapult systems?
More streamlined. Existing designs use steam pressure, which was no big deal when ships were coal or oil fired. Now that they’re nuclear, a separate internal structure supporting steam production has to be maintained. Magnetic launchers are less maintenance intensive and take up less space.
CC
Another feature of this catapult is that it can be dialed down or up depending on the aircraft being launched, a steam catapult would rip a drone apart, different weights of aircraft and different rates of acceleration will be able to be done with this type of catapult, if it works as planned :)