Meanwhile the USMC are getting used to the idea that the F-35B will be covered in pylons, may need a jammer that does a bit more than what the APG-81 can provide, may need to carry IR weapons as a matter of routine and may need better defensive capabilities when having to fly under the weather to acheive VMC."
There was talk of that jammer pod, I guess that may happen when you want IOC with block 2 and the cake isn't cooked till block 3, I haven't seen any real development of the idea, do you have a recent link? or are you reminiscing a what if
meanwhile the USAF seem happy and the USMC "will" be happy
http://www.airforce-magazine.com/Mag...112fighter.pdf
He did say, however, that F-35 requirements call for it to go into battle with “no support whatever” from AWACS/Growler systems.
“I don’t know a pilot alive who wouldn’t want whatever support he can get,” O’Bryan acknowledged. “But the requirements that we were given to build the airplane didn’t have any support functions built in. In other words, we had to find the target, ... penetrate the anti-access [defenses], ... ID the target, and ... destroy it by ourselves.”
O’Bryan said the power of the F-35’s EW/EA systems can be inferred from the fact that the Marine Corps “is going to replace its EA-6B [a dedicated jamming aircraft] with the baseline F-35B” with no additional pods or internal systems.
Asked about the Air Force’s plans, O’Bryan answered with several rhetorical Questions: “Are they investing in a big jammer fleet? Are they buying [EA-18G] Growlers?” Then he said, “There’s a capability here.”
O’Bryan went on to say that the electronic warfare capability on the F-35Ais as good as, or better than, [that of the] fourth generation airplanes specifically built for that purpose.”
The F-35’s “sensitivity” and processing Power—a great deal of it automated—coupled with the sensor fusion of internal and offboard systems, give the pilot unprecedented situational awareness