In article ,
Fred J. McCall wrote:

Chad Irby wrote:

:Um... the F-35 is going to have about a 50% better combat radius than
:the F-18E/F, according to the Navy.

Sources?

The fas.org website.

:600 nm for the F-35 versus 410 nm for the Super Hornet versus about 290
:nm for the older Hornets.

Paper airplanes always look good. I'll wait until they actually have
the thing designed completely and are bending metal. Any bets that
it's heavier and has shorter legs than the current paper says?

Not really, but it's certainly not going to miss the target by enough to
lose 1/3 of its range. Things have changed a bit for aircraft design
over the last thirty or forty years - it's not that hard to get a close
estimate of weight and performance for new aircraft now.

Funny that the Navy intends to keep a mix of F-35C and F/A-18E/F then,
wouldn't you say? Particularly with the Super Hornet in the 'heavy
lift strike' and 'tanker' roles.

It's a case of "well, we have these older strike planes with a lot of
hardpoints on them, and we're not going to obsolete a five year old
aircraft while it stil works in a lot of places."

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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