About That Austere-Base Thing...
Hmm... So what might be required would be some sort of ability to land slowly, so as not to need farsends of feet of perfick runway to stop on, without actually landing vertically. Just in case no-one has ever thought of doing this with the F-35B, I hereby claim all rights to the idea. Come to think of it, if it hasn't already occurred to Harrier operators, I hereby claim the rights there too. Now, if only someone had thought put some effort into engineering it that the F-35B's FCS would make the piloting task of such 'slow', 'rolling-vertical' and 'creeping vertical' landings really jolly-easy, they might even be a practical proposition and result in lots of that 'operational flexibility' sort of thing...