PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - F-35"D" Model
Thread: F-35"D" Model
View Single Post
Old 4th Jun 2010, 23:36
  #20 (permalink)  
GreenKnight121
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: by the Great Salt Lake, USA
Posts: 1,542
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
ORAC, I didn't make that up... that is what the USMC is saying.

Read this statement (in a March 3 2010 article in Aviation Week) from Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Duane Thiessen, deputy commandant for programs and resources.

U.S. Defense Budgets And Plans Collide | AVIATION WEEK

The Marine Corps offers some insight into how it plans to handle the airborne electronic attack (EA) portion of the problem. The flying life of the service’s upgraded EA-6B Prowler aircraft, already long in the tooth, is being used up at five times the peacetime rate. The solution is a recasting of the F‑35B as a “multispectral, theater information-integration plus strike fighter,” says Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Duane Thiessen, deputy commandant for programs and resources. “It’s going to change the way we do business.” But to afford it, the Marines have to forgo buying additional fourth-generation aircraft such as the EA-18G Growler EA aircraft. Instead, the F-35B will become the Marines’ EA replacement to the EA-6B.
Our intention is to shift EA to the JSF; and where there is opportunity in unmanned air systems, we will take advantage of that,” says Thiessen. “We have no plans for a two-seater. There is a lot of interest in trying to put some of this [EA capability] in [an unmanned aircraft system]. That is probably not going to be a Marine Corps program.”
GreenKnight121 is offline