SSSETOWTF -
"I think it's interesting that people generally seem to believe that the -B is the most threatened of the variants, which I don't agree with."
That may be true but not in the way that you say it. If the C either gets scrapped or kicked far into the future (sequester, sequester-deal, the simple hook fix flunks) there will be a lot of unhappy bunnies in big-deck Navy as the Marines get the big bucks for the most expensive jets in the budget, to perform missions that at best are a sub-set of Navy tacair missions.
On the other hand, if the B gets stretched out or whacked, you'll see an offensive against the C by Boeing, GE, Raytheon and the Rhino Mafia. The C and the B need one another to survive.
A point on weapons: I believe that MBDA has schemed a Meteor with slightly cropped tails that fits the AIM-120 bays, which are the same on the A, B & C. However: If the F-35 does take over the world, there will be a lot of weapons developed or modified over its lifetime to fit the outer bays - and since the vast majority of the jets will be As and Cs, those new weapons may well be sized to the longer bays of those aircraft.
As for SSSE's economic numbers: The only way I can make that work over 3000 aircraft is that the UK-domiciled content is 14 per cent, but that sounds high. Most of the jets are not Bs, and for As and Cs the major UK content is the ejection seat and a hunk of aerostructure. BAE Systems has more, but that's EW stuff in the US.
Last edited by LowObservable; 6th May 2012 at 21:10.