F135 engine, 28,000lbf military with a TSFC of .9lb/lb/hr.
F-35B internal fuel, 14,000lbs, likely reduced to 10-12,000lbs when they realize they cannot put GBU-53 in and have to go with the old cheap stuff (GBU-12/38/49/54) lying around in the dump or even newer kit (Brimstone/JAGM/APKWS) which happen to all be forward fire.
Pylon kits cost weight and drag and so a 2,000lb fuel penalty may be generous, especially hot'n'hi, when you consider that gas is also a refrigerant for the extremely hot EHAs and various other heat exchanger goodies.
Flight Idle = 60% IRT. 28 X .6 = 16,800lbf X .9 = 15,120lbs per hour. Twelve thousand pounds divided by two hundred fifty two pounds per minute = 47.61 minutes of flight time. If you assume you need at least 5 minutes of naval reserve at the boat, and 10 minutes over the target area, that's a total of 16 minutes each way.
Sixteen minutes at 400 knots (which is beyond generous for a jet with external stores at flight idle) = 107nm radius of action.
The very notion that the aircraft is going to be useful, even to a beachhead or SPOD seizure mission thus requires the acceptance of the idea that 8 jets delivering 1 mission per hour as a 'detachment' on an LHD is somehow a better investment than the modern equivalent of this-
LCT(R)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...28R%29_459.png
Equipped with Spike-NLOS, Netfires/Jumper or even Hoplite.
The F-35 is not a 440nm machine. Even if you assume a 100% error in my math due to changing cycle effects on TSFC as the throttle is pulled off, it is going to be a 200nm jet, at best.
Add to this the fact that it cannot take off while helicopters are spotted, bringing back casevac and loading second wave assaulters (both more important than CAS to sustaining ops tempo as the prevention of being shoved back into the waves) and that the V-22T and LHA-6 class as 'CVE not LHD' are _unpaid for_. And you have a royal mess.
Because the Marines want to be a replacement Air Force for the Nuclear Navy (having realized the end of SWA meant the end of funding SUW for bush beating wombat hunts while tacair is a goldplate glory hound mission 'all the time') but the Marines cannot figure out how they are going to do that without TWO carriers in their ARG, one a gator freighter and the other an SCS wannabe with all of 25 jets onboard.
Which is to say, each deployment will cost more with the USMC solution to airpower than the USN/CVN equivalent and will be MORE vulnerable to ICD/A2AD because the minidecks have to come that much closer in to deliver effects (barely over the radar horizon if you want to seriously stage an amphibious assault, say 35-50nm in the greenwater).
If this isn't a 'shortfall' I don't know what is because you would NEVER equip an interdictor with a .9 TSFC engine. That overfanned monstrosity is in the jet, sucking fuel and fattening the fuselage, solely because they need the torque generator to run the SDLF lift module.
And with the SDLF and no tanker (and likely no EFT, given how the thing wobbles, sinks and then climbs back up off the Wasp in clean configured videos) the F-35B has less legs than the Harrier II /even accounting for/ the fan water to boost landing thrust.
What a joke.