Navy’s F-35 doesn’t have range for real stealth strikes, House report says | Ars Technica
Posted by M. C. on May 24, 2018
This article is mild compared to others we have seen. The F-35 is one of the biggest boondoggles in US military history.
The F-35C suffers somewhat from the length of its development cycle. Competition for the Joint Strike Fighter program began in 1993—25 years ago
25 years and still stumbling. The military will keep on trying until it kills us.
The F-35C suffers somewhat from the length of its development cycle. Competition for the Joint Strike Fighter program began in 1993—25 years ago—when the military threats facing the United States were significantly different. In 1993, there was no concern about Chinese “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles, for example; but in 2010, China introduced the Dongfeng (or Dong-Feng) 21D, an anti-ship ballistic missile with a range of 900 miles and a circular error probability of 20 meters. That’s accurate enough, with satellite tracking and terminal guidance, to hit an aircraft carrier far offshore.
The F-35C’s advertised range is 1,200 nautical miles (roughly 2,200 kilometers), roughly 10 percent longer than that of the F/A-18. But for most strikes, that would require the carriers launching F-35C sorties to be much closer to the coast than falls within the comfort zone. And with advanced air and coastal defense systems—including, for example, the sorts that are popping up on islands in the South China Sea these days—less-than-stealthy tanker planes would give up the whole game…
Be seeing you
MCViewPoint 
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