He did describe an interesting application in the Gulf War, when a single Harrier squadron was based extremely close to the front lines (just 40 miles behind) for ridiculous mission times measured in minutes. However, even constructing a small expeditionary airfield is a challenge, and such a base would be vulnerable to enemy ballistic missiles or even ground attack.
The British actually built a steel mat airfield from scratch to forward base Harriers in the Falklands War. It took them only a few days to do it with only a small engineering unit, and most equipment and matting lost when the Argentineans sank the
Atlantic Conveyor.
Back in Nam meanwhile, we had the A-4 Skyhawk which was a conventional aircraft, but one with a damn short takeoff run. The Marines actually had portable catapults and arrestor wires they could setup to let the Skyhawks fly from about a 2,000 foot strip. That was small enough to fit in a realistic defended ground perimeter, something you could guard with a battalion and not a brigade or even division as a normal fixed airfield would demand.
Accurate ballistic missiles threaten everything; even moving armored formations can be successfully attacked. So that’s not really that specific a concern. Also F-35B could defend against those attacks, using the NCADE ABM missile now in development.
Getting F-35Bs on massive carriers like the Queen Elizabeth, while retaining the capability to add catapults, always seemed half-assed to me (unless it was a smart, under-handed move as Aaron Ash suggested). The ships could do so much more with F-35Cs, and you need catapults for E-2s anyway.
Well no money is allotted for E-2s, and since that’s easily a half billion dollar expenditure its not likely to appear out of thin air in a British defence budget. Also the F-35B is being bought for the RAF to fly as replacements for its own land based Harrier squadrons which support the British Army. The logic of replacing those specialist squadrons is highly open to question, but its currently a requirement.
Are the other European countries buying F-35B at all?
Current signed customers are the USMC, a joint RN-RAF pool, and the Italian Navy. At times the USAF and Israel have said they were considering changing a portion of F-35A orders to B models. Since the internal bays on the F-35B were shrunk that interest seems to have dried up. South Korea has expressed official interest recently. Spain is a strong potential customer, its just spending all its money on Typhoons right now and is no doubt waiting to see if F-35B works before it gets officially interested.
So it’s a niche market for sure, but a relatively large one. As in as its planned now its about half the size of the Typhoon market which is no small thing. Also, absolutely no other alternatives are on the horizon except to put the Harrier back into production. That’d be way retard expensive for such limited capability to happen.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
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- PeZook
