Posted on 05/24/2010 10:07:42 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
The Navy held a conference call with reporters today to shoot down any rumors that it’s going soft on the carrier version (F-35C) of the Joint Strike Fighter in favor of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
The Navy intends to buy 124 Super Hornets in a multiyear purchase plan between FY 2010–2013, for a grand total of 515 F/A-18E/F/G aircraft, said Rear Adm. Mike Manazir, head of naval aviation programs.
But the fact that the Navy continues to buy large numbers of Super Hornets does not mean it doesn’t plan to buy even more F-35s, a true “game changing” 5th generation stealth aircraft, he said.
The Navy and Marines planned buy remains 680 JSFs, Manazir said. How many of that total will ultimately be the carrier version F-35C or the Marine’s short take-off and landing version F-35B, remains a topic of discussion between the two services.
On the much discussed Navy tactical strike fighter shortfall, Manazir said the worst case projections see the shortfall sitting at about 177 aircraft peaking in 2017. By tweaking “mitigation levers” — which includes how long older versions of the F-18 continue to fly, the delivery rate of new Super Hornets, how soon F-35s can begin to roll off the production line in large numbers and the demand from combatant commanders for carrier strike – that shortfall can be reduced to about 100 aircraft.
The current demand for F/A-18A-D flying off carriers in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is “what is really stressing us right now,” he said. “If that demand signal was to decrease at some point then it would mitigate some of that shortfall.”
The Navy’s projections of a strike fighter shortfall are based on models that assume the Navy will continue flying carrier missions in support of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq
(Excerpt) Read more at defensetech.org ...
Bump and ping.
The One cares not; there are some hoops to be played. Mahalo.
ping
The F-35 (should be called a F/A-35) isn’t a game changer the navy didn’t build any kind of real fighter in this generation of fighters.
Yes but there’s probably other things already online for them including UAV’s
I know that is a dream a lot of people have but there is a lot of counter measures that could be used against them.
Yes you are correct. A man in the cockpit will always be better able to defeat the countermeasures.
That doesn’t mean that UAV’s cant augment him though.
After Air/space superiority has been achieved only then will they be effective.
one good counter measure china has proven will be effective will be to make most satellites unusable by spraying space with massive amounts of trash. There by making most UAV's unusable.
Well it looks to me like a lot of the UAV’s we are designing could easily have a cockpit put in them, maybe they already thought of that too.
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