From what I understand, when the Royal Navy was dithering back and forth between CATOBAR and STOVL for the Queen Elizabeth, the limiting factor was the cost of retrofitting an unproven EMALS system into a ship already under construction.
Being an ignorant former enlisted blue-suiter, it would be my guess that retrofitting arresting gear wouldn’t be quite as involved as the catapulting gear.
Wouldn’t a COD be operating at a higher landing weight than an F-35C?
The COD might have a higher weight (then again the F-35 is nicknamed the Fat-35 for a reason), but much lower landing speeds (and possibly a lesser sink rate) due to the long, straight wings.