I'm hearing a lot of hate building up specifically aimed at the F-35C at the moment. The 'anti-F-35' brigade, having realised they won't get the whole program cancelled, seem to have directed their campaign at a specific variant, the Navy's C model, as it is the furthest from entering service and has a few teething problems (mainly associated with the nose leg oscillating too much at the start of the catapult stroke leading to physical pain in the pilot's necks. The weight of the helmet might be a contributory factor too...)
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The underlying theme seems to be as usual an attempt to get the Super Hornet selected instead of the lightning (for international customers as well as the USN). The Super Hornet is an amazing aircraft to be sure, but it is the aircraft of today, not tomorrow. If the C is cancelled the USN will become the poor relation of the US armed forces in terms of capability, and would have to rely on it's 'junior service' the USMC to provide it's first strike aircraft (F-35B) on 'day one' of a campaign and follow up with 'bomb trucks', the Super Hornets.
We are of course talking about the future, i.e. five years from now and for the next three or four decades. The SH is a fine match for potential adversaries flying now, but this is about facing threats still in development. Back in the forties the Grumman Hellcat was one of the best fighters in the world, but how would the US have faced the future back then if they had said it was 'good enough' and cancelled new aircraft development? Into the sixties facing Mig 21s, 23s etc. with Hellcats? I'm exaggerating a bit but the point is still valid. Ten years from now the SH will still be a valid and viable frontline aircraft, but twenty years? Thirty years?
If the C is cancelled (and I truly hope not) then the only viable option for the USN would be to buy the B model and start integrating STOVL operations onto the big deck carriers (it has been done before, as far back as the mid 70s a USMC Harrier sqn was assigned to the air wing of the USS Franklin D Roosevelt on her final deployment and was able to fit in with the normal deck cycles quite easily.
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I think it's a 'manufactured crisis' myself, the naysayers have been trying to cancel the F-35 program for nearly two decades and have so far failed miserably. You can criticise the financial side of the program and the management of it, but the cold hard fact is the plane is amazingly capable. The guys who have flown it don't want to go into battle in anything else they have ever flown, including F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, Harriers, Typhoons, Tornados, you name it. These are seasoned veterans for the most part, and it's their own lives they are risking in combat. When they say THIS is the aircraft they want to have strapped to their backs when the fur starts flying, believe them.
If you want to put LockMarts management against a wall and line up a firing squad, that's an entirely different matter...
