Note that our resident shills are engaged in the time-honored Internet tactic of drowning the discussion with repetition and irrelevant data of dubious accuracy.
Nobody here is denying that the JSF has a cool(er) front exhaust that keeps HGI in check.
Nobody's saying that AM-2 has not often been used to permit jet ops on poor surfaces. That's what it's for. Protecting good surfaces on a CONUS base is something different.
Nobody is saying that heat/blast is an unfixable problem for carrier deck operations (although it is true that the USN was concerned about fatigue).
And
no informed critic that I know of has ever said that the F-35B will "melt decks". That's a silly and dishonest straw-man that the shills raise all the time. Spaz, can you quote an informed critic (that is, not some TV reporter) saying anything of the kind?
And I count $XX million Navy contracts as more convincing than anecdotes provided by
phony think-tanks on the LockMart payroll...
WhitePapers | SLDInfo
The hard facts remain that the B appears to have (among its other limitations) a real issue with VL on
normal surfaces, and that nobody has shown that "creeping vertical" will solve the problem, particularly on come-as-you-are forward strips. Moreover, the B is 3000 pounds heavier than the A, which already lands pretty hot, so conventional probably means a fast landing.