Originally Posted by
George K Lee
I don't think there is any way to recover to the ship unless the STOVL hardware is fully functional. I believe that was why, in the earliest days of CALF and JAST, McAir ditched their gas-driven lift-fan concept: the large, hot, high-pressure ducts that the system required represented a lot of single-fragment vulnerable area.
The fragility of the system was part of it. What really killed it dead was its inefficiency. The hot gas coupling proved to have huge losses. Lockheed's mechanical coupling while heavier (and initially developmentally riskier) had far less losses. And was much more robust and damage tolerant.