Not a boffin,
Your points and concerns are entirely reasonable, but a significant body of work has been done (and continues to be done) to analyse every conceivable failure case. I reiterate that the 35kt deck speed has not been plucked out of thin air. SRVL will not be an approved manoeuvre unless a lot of smart people agree that the risk of losing one aircraft, let alone several parked on the deck, is below the acceptable threshold.
Jacko,
You're a gent, sir and thanks for pulling me up on my rant. I made my point badly and while in a state of some frustration at reading too many pages of inaccurate ramblings and arbitrary proclamations about a programme that is very dear to my heart.
As I said, I own several of Mr Sweetman's books, and spent many a happy hour as a kid poring over 'Combat Aircraft of World War II' etc. But I'm afraid I still wouldn't dream of using the Tactics section of his 'Modern Air Combat' as the basis for my tactics in an air-air engagement. It makes fantastic reading for the uninitiated and gives a soupcon of the overall flavour, but it really isn't the sort of thing that a front-line mate would use. And I'm sure it was never intended as such.
I've read a couple of his articles on F-35/JSF, including the one quoted as gospel above, that have made me toss the magazine to one side / click to the next webpage with a wry smile. They do give the uninitiated a flavour of a fraction of what's going on in the programme, but even if they were 100% accurate the moment they were written (and in this particular case I don't see how it can have been), they're out of date by the time the magazine hits the newstand.
Perhaps I've missed some of his articles, or perhaps it's the old adage that 'bad news sells', but I've yet to see Mr Sweetman write anything paricularly positive about the F-35. I'm reknowned amongst my friends for being a negative and cynical person, yet I am regularly amazed by how good this airplane is and the mind-numbing capability it will give us (and I don't think I've drunk the Lockheed coolaid yet). But no one wants to talk about that and it infuriates me. Looking at what we in the RAF have been able to milk out of the Tornado, Jag & GR7/9 platforms in terms of capability, I just don't understand why people want to snipe at the F-35. Even if the programme totally implodes tomorrow and we get 10% of the capability that we thought we were going to get, it'll still make the guys who transition from one of the legacy platform's jaws drop. And it has an awful awful long way to fall before the programme starts to look like Typhoon's.
Apologies to Bill though for the lunch quip - that was too far.
Regards all,
Single Seat, Single Engine, The Only Way To Fly