Is the F-35 going to remain viable for much longer?
It's terribly bad form to blow one's own trumpet, but as the author of this piece, I was fascinated by what 'Smithy' says - he is probably Britain's leading fifth gen expert, having been an F-22 and F-35 pilot and an F-35 tactics development desk officer and capability manager, and now working on GCAP with Leonardo.
He says that by 2035 the F-35 will be where Typhoon is today. Still relevant, but not the 'apex predator'. Still useful, but as an adjunct to the next generation, and not as the ‘star’ of the show.
The LO configuration makes it hard to upgrade in any meaningful way (you can’t add new antennas or apaerures, as does the avionics infrastructure. TR3 and Block 4 are already proving difficult, while it's hard to see the kind of agile iteration of mission data that we already see on Typhoon ever becoming a reality on the F-35.
And the F-35A lacks the range and the combat persistence for tomorrow's peer-, or near-peer, conflicts. Nor can new weapons be easily or quickly integrated, and they can't be integrated on a sovereign or national basis at all.
It's no coincidence that the US, Britain, Italy, Japan and Korea are all already looking beyond F-35A - developing new sixth gen platforms and systems of systems is not easy, or cheap, and were F-35 adequate, no-one would be spending money doing so.