HH,
Thank you for the compliment - although it is wholly undeserved. I just try to help the threads along, is all.
If there were UK specific work on the F-35, it would certainly be led by LM. They also had the design lead for the forward fuselage, so addition of any retractable probe to the F-35A would be their job. However, the lead man for the fuel system when I served on the programme was a Brit, fresh off the Typhoon programme, and damn good. I mean severely damn good.
I have some fairly well found suspicions that the Canadians asked for some preliminary work to be done on a probe equipped F-35A. I would certainly rate it as 'feasible' - to the best of my knowledge, the space required for the probe on the A model hasn't been allocated to any other A model systems, but bear in mind that my knowledge is now many years old.
Any decision on this issue would have to be a carefully taken one - I would struggle with spending millions (and I mean many millions) on adding booms (not at all a small job) to UK tankers, which could only be used on one of our aircraft.
Best regards as ever to anyone working this one out,
Engines