Originally Posted by
Heathrow Harry
The US Navy has seldom gone for deep strike missions for application of naval aviation. Instead they tend to just batter the defenses down and peel the target back layer by layer till there is no opposition. Besides for deep strike the Navy can always turn to land attack cruise missiles. By the time the Navy is doing land strikes, they have destroyed air defenses and gained air superiority. So that stealth for the F-35 is just a waste of money."
The A3, A5, particularly A6 and to a degree the Bombcat role for F14 towards the end of its life tend to contradict that. The failure/cancellation of the A12 programme to replace the A6 constrained them to the construct they have now. Nor can cruise missiles service all the deep strike targets you might wish to hit.