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PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 11:41 am 
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More fuel to add to the fire started by rabid F35 critics that populate a lot of the aerospace forums across the defence blogosphere:

ARS Technica

Quote:
Navy’s F-35 doesn’t have range for real stealth strikes, House report says
Risks to carriers, absence of stealth tankers puts "necessary targets" out of reach.


Sean Gallagher - 5/22/2018, 1:30 PM

The House Armed Services Committee has sent its report on the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to the floor. And buried in that report are words of caution about the F-35C, the Navy's version of the F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter—and the Navy's whole carrier air capability in general. The reason for that concern is that the F-35C doesn't have the range to conduct long-range strikes without in-flight refueling—and the Navy's tanker planes are not exactly "stealth."

The F-35C suffers somewhat from the length of its development cycle. Competition for the Joint Strike Fighter program began in 1993—25 years ago—when the military threats facing the United States were significantly different. In 1993, there was no concern about Chinese "carrier killer" anti-ship ballistic missiles, for example; but in 2010, China introduced the Dongfeng (or Dong-Feng) 21D, an anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 900 miles and a circular error probability of 20 meters. That's accurate enough, with satellite tracking and terminal guidance, to hit an aircraft carrier far offshore.

The F-35C's advertised range is 1,200 nautical miles (roughly 2,200 kilometers), roughly 10 percent longer than that of the F/A-18. But for most strikes, that would require the carriers launching F-35C sorties to be much closer to the coast than falls within the comfort zone. And with advanced air and coastal defense systems—including, for example, the sorts that are popping up on islands in the South China Sea these days—less-than-stealthy tanker planes would give up the whole game.

(...SNIPPED)

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PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 2:59 pm 
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Against my better judgement, I'll make a comment concerning these kinds of articles.

'So f-----g what?!' OMG!!! The new expensive fighter won't do this! But wait! The old expensive fighter won't do that either! Whatever will we do?!? The Chinese have a missile that will keep us away! Oh no, so do the Russians! But we can still get close to all the smaller countries, woohoo!

Sorry. Move along, nothing to see here.

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PostPosted: Wed May 23, 2018 10:25 pm 
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Well, when you take the USN requirement for an A-6 replacement, the USAF requirement for a F-16 replacement, and the USMC requirement for a replacement for the AV-8 and DIRECT that a single aircraft be developed with a "NEAR-COMMON" Airframe and Avionics design and COST LESS than then current aircraft ... you get an aircraft basically a F-16/F-18 size aircraft with the inherent limited fuel and weapons payload, limiting range and how much can be carried.


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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 11:03 am 
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There is no harm in having the discussion. I'm not sold on the F-35 yet, but know few aircraft have met everyone's expectations.

I would prefer something along the lines of a Gen 5 F22.

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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 1:26 pm 
I agree with admiral hawk.

That is the history of military technology: One advance is negated by someone else's new technology. So a countermeasure must be devised to overcome the opponent's new technology. Once the countermeasure is in place, the opponent thinks of something else to defeat your countermeasure.

Nothing can be invincible forever.


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PostPosted: Thu May 24, 2018 3:24 pm 
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The F-35 has some interesting sensors and electronics that should make it very effective as a support platform. For example there are suggestions that it might be used to guide ship-launched missiles to intercept ICBMs, etc.

However, for me it is just too little aircraft for the strike mission. The single engine, relatively low speed and relatively small payload in some ways makes it more vulnerable than its predecessors.

Apparently it has performed well in air to air combat tests so it is probably a compromise in capability and flexibility vs cost. That said it is extremely expensive! Part of the problem is the unnecessarily complicated maintenance system which should probably have been developed separately as a later upgrade rather than making the aircraft dependent on it from the start.

Personally, I am skeptical about stealth. It is expensive and it dictates the shape and size of the aircraft which means you get less fighting capacity (the B version does not even have an integral gun! Anyone remember the Phantom in Vietnam?). It might work now but in a few years time radar technology might have advanced to the point where it can "see" and target the F-35 at reasonable ranges. I imagine quite a few people with fancy brass adornments are hoping that it won't!

I suppose we won't know the capabilities of the plane until it has to do what it was designed for and as it has been ordered by a lot of countries it will have to do something for all that money!

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