The F-35A is the land based (USAF) version - which we've never ordered. :hmm::hmm:

ORAC you beat me to it --

We had a fair share of Epsilons at my school, seems little has changed.

Why then are the FAA concentrating on building CATOBAR experience as we speak? I think you will find that the RAF are far more interested in reverting to the B..............

I don't think anyone could sell a reversal of the B-to-C switch.

unless the -C can't catch the trap...

Naysayer!

If that happens, its Shornets for shor.

Unless it's Rafale, Seaphoon or Sea Gripen?

The Rafale is French (which may not be as big of a stumbling block as it used to be, but still) and the others involve risk, for which there is no further appetite.

Unless of course they subscribe to the why pay money now when it can be the next government's problem.

As an aside I believe Saab test pilots have simulated landing (and stopping) a Gripen on a US carrier without using a hook.

Thought this might be of interest. I know the LA Times isn't the best place to pick up articles of this nature but I just happened to see it.

The F-35, the military's next-generation fighter jet, has begun its first flight tests carrying external missiles at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert.

F-35 makes first test flights with external weapons - latimes.com

Very much of interest, 500N. Thanks for the post.

So, are those stealth pylons, stealth launchers and stealth missiles? If not, why are we spending so many billions on a stealth jet just to hang stuff on it to give it the same RCS as the much cheaper options? In fact, I thought the whole point is that it can carry all you'll even need in that weapons bay, the one that made the designers move the main wheels back too far for the hook to work.

The internal bays will carry "all you'll ever need" for the Day 1 strike missions. However, it would be barking to constrain a jet to only internal capabilities in circumstances where stealth configurations weren't needed.

Actually an example of common sense.....

The internal bay/clean wing stealth is for the "first day of war" missions in a high threat environment. Down side is range limitations and limited weapon load.

Once the AD/SAW threat has been been supressed then you hang the pylons and have a much greater rnage and weapons capability.

NaB, ORAC - Indeed that was the idea, based on GW1 experience. And, clearly, it resulted in a smaller airplane than the earlier A/F-X, which was designed to carry all its air-to-ground ordnance (4 x LGBs) internally, and certainly could not have been created in a STOVL variant.

So the USAF and USN were told to live with a two-bomb aircraft (SDB excepted) on the grounds that weapons were now super-precise and they could load the jet wall to wall on "Day 2".

Unfortunately...

What was found in Bosnia was that the Day 1/Day 2 model only worked against a cooperative adversary playing Soviet rules, which assumed that a sufficiently dense and hardened IADS would be a meat grinder for the attacker. With a more flexible and innovative defender, EMCON and mobility meant that defenses could be suppressed but not as easily destroyed.

You must have gone to a special school then.

Anyway back to the subject why carry around a dead weight (lift engine) why not have a flat top carrier and a conventional launch system?

I wonder why the store on station 2 is carried at a different angle to the one on station 3?

.

The angle on the stores on the other wing (station 9 & 10) looks less sever so I wonder if the combination of the off-centre camera and the droopy nose of the LGB seeker makes it look worse than it is.

That said I do believe they have a small difference between 2 & 3 (and 9 & 10 on the other side), presumably for aerodynamics as these stations have little or no RCS reduction. Stations 1 & 11 have been developed and tweaked for a reduced RCS as this was part of the requirement - the rail, pylon and ancillaries are all set at pretty weird angles that are not fairly reflected in the picture above.

Agreed, JTO. With LGBs on there, probably not too much of a problem, but weapons with narrow field of view seekers (like, say, an AIM9 has) would have a problem acquiring their tgt unless electronically tweeked to point the seeker heads in the right direction. Interesting.