I don’t even get the f-35b, it’s just a worse f-35c that does all the same things but better. Is the 35c not compatible with british supercruisers or something?
35B is S/VTOL
35C is catobar
theyre too different to compare.
35c needs proper carrier, 35b - doesnt
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I have a very hot take about that, but the people here specifically aren’t ready to hear it I promise you
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Our carriers can be easily retrofitted for an electric catapult and were designed with that in mind for future airframes (like maybe a naval version of the Tempest), but are intended to be used with STOVL aircraft with the ramp in their initial configuration. Its a capability that has proven highly valuable for the Britain in the past with the Harrier. Especially traits like the fact a ramp requires 0 maintenance and never has down time due to faults.
Though the entire F-35 program ballooned and probably didnt become worth it in the end. We should have kept our Harrier fleet
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They cheaped out (surprise)and built them with a slope instead of a catapult.
Now I would be curious whether the F-35C would not be able to “self-launch” off a slope with a reasonable load out.
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I have decided the purchase in general was a waste, I enjoyed the thought exercise of trying to make it work out as a positive, but its a humiliation disguised as a pat on the back, I think frankly if the jet did indeed meet the requirements, then the requirements were wrong(as British requirements often are). If we just wanted sensors we could’ve fitted a whole host of them to Taranis for 1/10th of the programme cost. I agree with you on Typhoon essentially doing every role F-35 is slated for better, and that will last to at least 2035, and I heavily doubt the F-35 will be anywhere near as dominant as an air superiority platform no matter when Block IV roles out.
What imbecile decided we needed an F-16 when we explicitly rejected that aircraft for a whole host of reasons when we evaluated a successor to the Phantom (and would penultimately end up designing something closer to the F-15E).
See this is where I really strongly disagree. As a better idea sure, but not for the UK. I would say that the F-35A isn’t a complete waste of money but for the UK it is. Tempest will do literally everything better… so why do we need F-35A’s that will be delivered 3 years before the Tempests IOC is due? Tempest could carry a pair of nuclear tipped RJ15 if we invested in it, unless the whole nuclear strike thing isn’t really necessary because as the MoD keep reminding us, it will be part of an integrated NATO nuclear mission, which conveniently included other nations and all of which cannot utilise these nukes without US approval anyway.
Trainer for the F-35B pilots is a fair ish point but not really, because that means less F-35B’s to put on the carriers in 20 years time, because we’ve got a bunch of operationally irrelevant and surpassed F-35A’s that we didn’t need to purchase sitting around.
Me when I do the MiC equivalent of drawing a wheel 10 years after I was supposed to have built a car…
I disagree with the F-35A purchase for the reasons listed above, we’d be better off designing a nuclear cruise missile with France as part of FC/ASW to replace their ASMP/A missiles anyway which we’d have control over rather than being a delivery method.
As for the JSM, yes it will fit inside of an F-35A, making it exclusively useful around land bases. Are we forgetting the reason aircraft carriers became relevant? it’s because they could defeat entire fleets expeditionary using aircraft deployed munitions… F-35B carrying it externally makes the whole point of the expensive stealth jet (that’s barely supersonic) redundant… could’ve done that with a Harrier and better yet, the Harrier would’ve been able to carry a superior ASHM in Storm Shadow…
Do we really expect Chinese Type 055D destroyers not to detect an F-35B from sub 350km with 2 external JSM’s? And that’s assuming it can take off with them from a QE class carrier with or without decent amounts of fuel.
What idiot designed a stealth jet and a stealth cruise missile in tandem, but then made the cruise missile not fit a derivative of the stealth jet?
The aircraft is quite capable of SEAD, aside from having zero SEAD munitions, I don’t fancy it’s chances dropping a Paveway IV on a high power AD system particularly given Paveway IV is 40km from a Typhoon that goes M 2.35 let alone an F-35 flying at best at M1.6…
There is no inventory for Typhoon compatible with F-35. Brimstone was dropped as a requirement as the delays from LM were revised from an IOC requirement to Block, estimated to take so long that it was predicted SPEAR 3 would be in service before the Brimstone was integrated, this is proving to be true with SPEAR 3 expected in 2028 and SPEAR/Brimstone compatibility expected in 2032.
ALARM would be good but again you’d have no compatibility, we’d be better off reprogramming an AMRAAM.
Which is a disgrace considering we were the only tier 1 partner, we sacrificed 3 stealth programmes to join this consortium, we designed two £4bn pound aircraft carriers around this aircraft we supposedly had some design authority on and at a time where we had downsized the fleet by 2/3rd and were having to extend the life of SSBN’s because we couldn’t afford both.
We crippled ourselves for an asset with no standoff capability.
We had our own programme for this… 2 internal cruise missiles, 8 AAM’s internal, VTOL, M2+ potentially even supercruise… Not even ambitious if you just don’t settle for nonsense.
This jet is pretty much F-104 2.0 where everyone is lobbied into buying it, everyone swears it’s the best thing since flight began and then get it and over time very swiftly start to admit that it was a colossal mistake.
Since the first deliveries in 2015 its been so interesting and really infruriating to watch the MoD swear its incredible, and defence analysts swear its incredible, and yet over time, more wispers emerge, temperamental, underpowered, unsuitable for UK requirements, lacks carry capacity, lacks range, should’ve chosen F-35C, can’t fully replace Eurofighter or Tornado, has not fully achieved a single one of its requirements according to an NAO investigation…
Depends who it was promised to there’s several components to this. There’s the performance promises contractually, the performance promises in terms of what it replaces, the performance promises compared to expectations and then the political promises.
I mean as I said earlier about how i’d be less irritated if it had been less of a political blunder (for reference here, when the UK signed over its research on Replica and other VLO projects for Tier 1 partnership we were given an contractual clause that ‘The UK shall be able to independently Manufacture, Maintain and Modernise its JSF fleet’).
The UK does not fully manufacture F-35 as we were initially denied, and then LM tried to charge us to set up a full BAE production line like Japan and Germany will have when we already paid with our buy-on. We said no and now only build the fuselages.
The UK cannot maintain its F-35 fleet independently because they have to be flown back to Fort Worth for software upgrades…
The UK cannot modernise its F-35 fleet whatsoever because LM refuses to share the source code despite having a contractual obligation to and the F-35 has anti-tamper software, it would also cause a diplomatic incident and because we bet ourselves on a bad aircraft, we have no other option but to not kick up a fuss, because we need the jets. However this means we cannot for example integrate Meteor and SPEAR/Brimstone at home in the UK as was promised.
We were also promised that we would be the European Software and Maintenance Hub for F-35 similar to what Fort Worth does in the US but for European customers… but yet again, LM refuses to share the source code, so we can’t do that.
As for performance. The mandate from the UK PoV was a jet that would replace both VLO concepts in development (Replica and P.125) and also types in service (Tornado, Eurofighter, Harrier). Amalgamating these you get requirements for high supersonic agility which the F-35 lacks, supercruise which it lacks, internal carriage of cruise missiles which it lacks, medium-high range which it lacks, speed which it lacks.
They were expecting a VTOL, multirole but somewhat kinematically worse F-22. And to be clear, the F-35 is not that, it is catastrophically worse as if they forgot every metric that made the EFT good, or the F-15 good, or the F-16 good, and what makes the F-22 the pinnacle of air superiority.
If we were offered a stealthy, but substantially worse F-16. Then we should’ve said no, because in no universe is that what we needed.
This isn’t just limited to the B either. The A and C are at least useful but they’re still not good by traditional metrics. They’re slow, cumbersome, heavy, lack carry capacity, lack diversified munitions, and lack range. Just not to the degree of F-35B which is like actually useless due to these things, they’re just bad due to these things. How do you perform air policing at M1.6 against M2 targets? How do you form a branch of a carrier strike group with no strike capability? How do you perform SEAD with no ARM? How do you perform deep strike roles when you can’t carry deep strike class missiles?
What should have been designed was a jet with the profile of the F-15 IMO. Much more versatile. F-22 does this to the extreme, but you could just tone it down hence J-35…
I’m not some China glazer, but at least they got the right idea in terms of performance metrics with the J-35. M2, supercruise, internal carriage of 4 (large not small like JSM) cruise missiles, 6 large internally carried missiles (again not small like AMRAAM).
I concede the B variant ruined a lot, but lets not pretend the jet was gonna be phenomenal regardless. The A and C didn’t make weapons bay concessions due to the B for example, the bay is just too small…
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The UK should’ve lobbied for an export F-22 type jet as the basis for the A/C variants and continued P.125 as a domestic venture with the USMC instead of the B, similar to the Harrier II. P.125 had much more promise from all i’ve seen both in traditional metrics that the F-35 ignores to its detriment and as a production platform.
The B is worse than the C at everything but it’s VTOL. UK carriers use VTOL so a slope due to an agreement made between the USMC and RN which reduced unit prices for airframes and allowed deeper sharing of pilots and VTOL tactics (see the RN developing the rolling VTOL landing to allow return to carriers or LHA’s with munitions embarked, something the USMC did not previously do).
The UK carriers are designed for EMALS which we co-funded with the US. However we didn’t select it partially because its still not working properly now, let alone then. (See China being the first nation to Electromagnetically catapult a 5th gen aircraft recently with the J-35A off of Fujian because the Gerald R. Ford still is yet to do this with an F-35C).
If your take is, you don’t need a replacement, I’m inclined to agree. Harrier had its niche in the cold war, as a solution to both a cheap carrier and also for VTOL landings only a few miles from the front lines. Offering a solution to both makes it worthwhile. To only one makes it redundant compared to its tradeoffs. If you want a carrier, do it properly. That’s what the USN told the RN when they were designing the QE’s hence why they’re 3.5 times the displacement of the Invincibles.
The USMC asked us to, we redesigned the QE’s 3 times and the final redesign was at the behest of the USMC from CATOBAR to STOVL. I think it was a mistake, but this wasn’t simply just a case of UK penny pinching (surprisingly).
As for the F-35C? Yeah hell nah that’s not gonna work.
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F-35B does have a couple of advantages over the A and C model from a British perspective. Harriers were Joint Force - so a common pool of airframes, crews and capabilities that were both Air Force and Fleet Air Arm. The 35B fits neatly into that setup - albeit far smaller in numbers - allowing both pools of pilots to retain currency and giving both RAF and FAA a 5th gen. If you went for 35A it won’t work from a carrier and the C requires full CATOBAR carriers.
It’s an easier sell to bean-counters as well - you can say ‘this mega expensive thing can cater for TWO arms - give us the money!’. That’s one way they got the AH.1 fleet past the spreadsheet brigade - the AAC managed to argue that they could be used from carriers and assault ships as well as from land. That the idea actually worked was a bonus…
SVTOL is also kinder to airframes - landing is a far gentler affair than smacking into a carrier/arrestor wire so fatigue and structural stresses are reduced. Again, handy if you have a small fleet that is acting as a common pool between the RAF/FAA.
In an ideal world, RAF would have a fleet of 35As and the RN would have a similar fleet of 35Bs - but this world isn’t ideal. The Typhoon force could do with some more numbers as well…
The MoD and cancelling promising projects to buy American that ends up costing more than the cancelled aircraft and has less functionality than the cancelled aircraft. Name a more iconic duo.
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Do the British use 9x in their f-35s?
ASRAAM, I don’t even think we have 9X in inventory
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Interesting, do you know if they’re the only non 9x user on f35s?
We are as the only IR missiles integrated on the F35 are ASRAAM and AIM-9X
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Probably, though our entire F-35 deal relies on having our own weapons integrated, so we’re a bit weird in that regard
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Is it just meteor/asraam being integrated, or are air to ground weapons also being integrated?
PW4 and SPEAR iirc
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Are the fins too large for integration?
more LM being useless and a PITA to work with
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Nope, just that Sidewinders don’t go in the bay on the F-35, the issue is that there isn’t a certified ejector style mount for it (on the F-22, the side bay has a integral hinged mechanism specifically to allow internal carriage of the LAU-7 / -127, and launch the AIM-9M / -9X as per normal )so there is a geometry issue since it’s mounted too deep and would just impact the forward firewall.
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