F-35 Cancelled, then what ?

[Engines]

This post mainly for PhilipG, also others interested:

I might be able to help allay some of your concerns over SSLs - but I might not. Anyway, hope this helps.

The UK requirement for SSLs (SRVLs as were) has been taken extremely seriously by the JSFPO. As I know I've posted before, it arose in around 2003, and has been worked since, apart from the UK induced two year break from 2010 to 2012.

It might help to review how this has been addressed. There was an initial study in around 2003, mainly led by the LM/BAES flight controls. performance and flight test teams, plus ship suitability, to assess whether SSLs were possibly feasible on CVF, and whether any modifications might be required. These led on to initial simulator trials in the UK (around 2004) with early deck layouts for the CVF. Soon after the STOVL aircraft started short landing work to prove compliance with USMC short strip requirements, results were fed into the SSL models (simulations). The Qinetiq trials in 2007 and 2008 using the VVAC Harrier were designed to support SSL work, including landing aid design.

Meanwhile, the hard yards were being worked by the rest of the LM team, checking such aspects as landing gear response, braking performance, structural loads, flight control loads, pilot displays, engine control responses and tons of other stuff.

And the UK has developed a ground breaking new form of landing aid (the Bedford array) that is designed to exploit the F-35B's flight controls and displays to further reduce pilot workload in higher seas and bad visibility. Again, I don't expect anyone behind that work to get much credit on this forum, but they should.

I'm trying to get over the fact that this is a serious requirement, and is being worked as part of the overall programme. It's not a 'Dolittle' type measure, it's not being done 'half arsed' and it's not something terribly new - the aircraft already has to be able to do land based SLs, and is specifically designed to do them.

The key 'uncertainty' (to use your term - I'd use 'risk', but there you go) is putting the SSL manoeuvre into practice against a moving ship with the expected Wind Over Deck (WOD) - this means that the aircraft is moving faster through the air than relative to the deck. Clearly, this can't be tested on land. The main results that the ship trials would deliver would be the actual 'landing scatter' along and across the deck, as well as actual braking performance, as well as detailed routines for the people on the ship as well as in the aircraft to conduct these safely and effectively. This is normal, standard, well understood, ship integration stuff. It's not being done on a wing and a prayer.

Finally, I might be able to help with your concern over the ability of the F-35B to take off 'with a decent payload'. The programme had a KPP for a US flat deck STO and also a KPP for a UK ramp STO. (incidentally, this was the only UK specific KPP on the whole programme). This KPP assumed a set payload for a set mission. All the early data, later confirmed by flight test, was that the aircraft met this KPP with room to spare. Ski jump launches will, as expected, deliver safer and lower workload STOs at significantly higher weights than from a flat deck. As to whether these weights are 'decent' or not, I can't say. What I can say is that they are considerably higher than any catapult launched aircraft the UK ever put into the air, and exploit the F-35B's envelope to the full.

Hope this helps, best regards as ever to those actually doing the stuff for the people at the front line,

Engines