"José Herculano" wrote:

snip

I may understand why the Marines want some fixed wing capability on their
assault ships, although the plan to replace their Hornets with the STOVL
rather than the CTOL F-35 is looking dumber by the minute.

Why? The F-35s have considerably better range than their F-18A/Cs, and
apparently equal or better range than the F-18E/Fs.

Now the USAF wanting some STOVLs... I can only reason that some political
generals are bowing to the pressure of some politicos that want a larger
numbers of the jumpers to decrease the unit price the UK and others will
have to cough. A CAS F-35? All that costly stealth platform carrying a bunch
of stuff under the wings and looking like the Statue of Liberty on the radar
on account of that, and with a questionable ability to take punishment from
bellow and still be useful on its original role?

snip

As was mentioned in the Comanche decision briefing, when doing CAS (at least
recently), RCS has been irrelevant. IR, visual and aural signatures are far
more important, along with sensors and weapons. The F-35 has all of those, PLUS
radar stealth for those first night of the war missions. And for BAI, INT, OCA,
DCA, etc.

Guy