Originally Posted by glojo
'Off the shelf' for a warship capable of carrying a state of the art very complex aircraft which has already seen the USS Wasp having to undergo modifications to operate it.
Please enlighten me... just what were these modifications?
All I have read about were:
1. installation of test & measuring instruments specifically and only for the flight tests, not for normal operations,
2. repainting of the aft 1/3 of the flight deck with standard non-skid,
3. painting a rather small area of the aft flight deck with a new non-skid coating that has been developed to vastly increase the period between repaintings (and to handle V-22 exhaust heat better).
When F-35Bs are ready for deployment there certainly will be actual modifications to the ships... specifically, the required maintenance equipment will be installed,
just as is done when any new aircraft type comes aboard!