Spaz,
You usually choose the articles about
JS"F" you post rather carefully to shine good light on the programme. Have you not read this article or can you not recognize the stupidity of what it says? I'm not going to spend much time pulling it to bits, but here are a couple of howlers.
“Let’s say we’re in an anti-access environment and we’re going to go deep, we would launch all the airplanes off, get them all set, and we would push the F-35C way inside,” Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, the Navy’s director of air warfare told USNI News on Dec. 20. “He would go in there using his X-band stealth technology, and go in there and he would get radar contacts and surface contacts and would ID them for us.”
At least he recognizes that the stealth is X-Band technology; let's say missile guidence and AI radar in the main. Of course, ground based radars are going to be S or L band (or lower depending on where in the world he's thinking of).
He also seems to be implying (or perhaps from his words I'm inferring) that
JS"F" will be the replacement for a host of ISTAR assets. This isn't the first FJ platform to have sensors and datalink and we haven't managed to phase out all the other gathering platforms just because they arrived.
F-35Cs flying deep inside enemy territory would also play a key role in providing terminal guidance for long-range stand-off weapons launched by other platforms such as Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet or a warship.
Oops, we still need the old platforms to carry and launch the stand-off stuff. Why?
However, the F-35C will need some data-link modifications
We knew that, we've discussed it before.
Lockheed Martin is working with other contractors to make that capability happen,
Yes, but let's hope it doesn't distract them from actually getting the platform out there and working.
In order to extend the F-35C’s range, the Navy hopes to refuel the stealthy new fighter from the service’s future Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft
I
hope so too. If the range needs extending, as he suggests, I would
hope there is more in place than
hope.
We need to have that link capability that the enemy can’t find and then it can’t jam.
Link is a radio. Never believe that it cannot be received (the people you want to receive it can, so it is receivable) or jammed. Technology always moves on.
But the Navy has never operated a stealthy aircraft with the kinds of sensors found onboard the F-35C before
Indeed. So the rest of the wishlist in the article is not only right, but necessary.
Manazir described a recent long-range air dominance simulation exercise in which there were Marine Corps weapons officers flying the F-35C.
Is he suddenly claiming that
JS"F" can take on the Air Dominance role as well as everything else?
Not the best advert for the jet in terms of credibility because it claims a lot based on very little.