Originally Posted by
Lima Juliet
With the pitiful range/endurance of the F35B, I don’t think so. So we would need to buy F35A (and some boom tankers) to do the SEAD/DEAD role or the better, and more expensive, F35C (which at least can use a drogue tanker). But these assets are EXPENSIVE compared to Typhoon ECR or aircraft like EA-18G Growler. Note that the RAAF ordered their Growlers around the same time as their F35As and see them as “complementary” to the F35A mission?
Then there are many articles like this that suggest that F35 needs a SEAD/DEAD and EW aircraft to support it’s mission:
https://www.businessinsider.com/f-35-needs-electromagnetic-cover-from-growlers-2014-4?r=US&IR=T
You won’t get any disagreement from me on the A vs B question, but only the most hardcore FAA types want the UK to take all 138 F-35s as B-models. The question is ‘when’ there will be some A-models, not ‘if’ and they will have the extra legs needed to do SEAD/DEAD CAPs in support of their dumpy brethren.
Must admit, I’m sceptical about the whole concept of anti-radiation missiles these days. Modern SAM barely need to emit at all when fully networked. Location by ‘other means’ and targeting on coordinates, with active millimetric radar for terminal accuracy as per Spear 3 and AARGM, strikes me as a better concept.
Then there is the question of why bother with SEAD when you can sneak in and destroy the targets which actually matter... or lob
these in from a safe distance. And finally I think you’d be very surprised at the relative cost of Typhoon (at a time where each order for a handful of new aircraft means keeping production facilities open for longer) versus F-35 (where unit costs are falling as the committed order book grows).
And finally finally... stand-off jamming, yes. But as I stated, we’ve got to leave some jobs for our NATO colleagues to do, and this is a good one to leave for the Germans given their reluctance to do anything too offensive.