I think it is just awesomely fantabulous news that (according to a reporter who's been quite solid lately on Navair news) the Navy director of air warfare is talking about
when it enters the U.S. Navy’s arsenal in large numbers in the 2030s.
OK, that might just be a typo. On the other hand, Manazir goes on to explain that the Navy has a specific role for the F-35, as an armed ISR platform; and that, having already told the JSFPO where to stuff the Block 3I compromise, the Navy now sees a long-range, LPI/LPD datalink, not yet defined, let alone included in Block 3F, as essential.
Also, the talk about "datalink modifications" suggests that just strapping a gateway like NGC's JetPack on to a Hawkeye is not the solution the Navy's looking for, nor is the MADL daisy-chain approach.
Oh and PS - the fankiddies were perfectly ready to dump all over Majumdar when he wrote about the F-35B's (and by extensio, the A's) super
ingawesome supersonic performance...
An interesting factoid, one of the USMC test pilots mentioned this little tidbit—they have to use a modified Rutowski profile in order to get the F-35B and C up to Mach 1.6. Basically, you do one push over, unload the jet and accelerate, get up to 1.2, turn and repeat until you hit 1.4 Mach, turn and repeat till you hit Mach 1.6. It just barely gets there and barely has any gas left over afterwards.