What a crapload of FUD in this article. The F-35 EOTS does include a laser designator, which can desginate and track ground targets.
The F-35 will have the ability to carry advanced targeting pods with built-in video downlinks if necessary, it will just lose most of its stealth. But the F-35 was designed for first day of war stealth, then conventional non-stealth bombloads afterwards.
The F-35, when it reaches initial operating capability, will not instantly replace all of those other aircraft on day one. F-16s and A-10s will still be around for decades.
An obvious counter to such incredibly advanced aircraft uses a very old military balance, between quality and quantity. If a military relies too heavily on one or the other, it becomes vulnerable to attack using the other.
While there certainly is a need for such an advanced system, there is also a pressing need for a low cost, low tech, expendable system that can be mass produced in huge numbers.
They do not have to be particularly fast, maneuverable or stealthy. Nor do they need a great deal of weaponry. But they need to exist in great numbers.
Imagine a “buzz bomb” type aircraft. A very simple system that has a common conventional engine, a fuel tank, some type of weapon, even just a bomb, internal wire guidance, and a shielded modular computer brain that can be inserted just before it is used, with an even simpler ‘auto pilot’ that works if its ‘brain’ is knocked out. Its skin is made of recycled beer cans. The aircraft comes in a box and can be assembled, fueled and programmed in just a few minutes prior to launch.
Per unit, optimally about $100,000 each. Maybe less.
The cheapest F-35A in full production is $85,000,000 each. The Pentagon plans to build 2,443 at $160m each. Around $390 billion dollars.
For the same amount of money as just one of these, you could make 850 of these cheap aircraft. An armada. A close to unstoppable armada. For $390 billion, you could make 3,900,000 of these small aircraft. Enough to invade another world.
That's not a bug, that's a feature.
System architecture — for lack of a better term — gets ‘frozen’ when a design reaches production. When an aircraft has fundamental problems that delay production those systems can, and do, become obsolete before Initial Operational Capability. Happens to some extent with all aircraft, and ‘A’ models rapidly get Block upgrades.
Some Beasty women should find something to do other than journalism on military and technical issues.