The Marines should probably have been told that if they wanted something, they should ask the Navy, like usual.
It might make complete sense for countries that don’t have aircraft carriers or in-flight refueling to have VTOL fighters although I doubt the US was thinking about that when designing it.
If not for the jointness of the program, my opinion is that the Marine Corps would have gotten out of the business of having jets on big deck amphibs. It’s hard for me to believe that the Marine Corps would have invested in their own unique fixed-wing strike platform during the same period they were making large investments in the V-22, two new amphibious fighting vehicles, a new tactical wheeled vehicle, a massive heavy lift helicopter, a recap/modernization of their H-1 fleets, etc.
Eh? The primary purpose of VTOL fighters is to operate from carriers (though they were originally envisaged as a hedge against the vulnerability of airfields).
I should have said: “The C version is sufficient for a military that has fullsize aircraft carriers whereas the B version would have a lot of value to countries that don’t have carriers or only small ones.”
If you’re going to have a 100 000 ton and 1000 feet long carrier anyway, why does it need to be vertical TOL as opposed to short TOL?
Perhaps the B version would be worth it if you could get rid of fullsize carriers and replace them with small ones or even by having a “distributed aircraft carrier array” where a group of 5000-20 000 ton ships carry a handful of airplanes each. I suppose that will eventually happen when they’re unmanned.
I’m not following what you’re talking about. The STOVL variant was designed with ~40,000 ton carriers (in U.S. terms, large deck amphibious assault ships) in mind. That’s it.
My bad:
I agreed with RNATB that it wasn’t worth it to compromise version A and C for the sake of version B since the Marines didn’t need to have their own stealth fighter deployed from LDAAS, they could have relied on in-flight refueled F-35As from the Air Force and aircraft carrier-deployed F-35Cs from the Navy’s fullsize carriers.
The F-35B might be worth it in other circumstances, though, like for other countries or if the US wanted to replace its fullsize carriers with smaller motherships.
Or for F-35Bs to operate from amphibious ships – since that is 100% the plan from the beginning, and there is no plan (in the next few years at least) to replace CVNs with “smaller motherships.”
It’s just strange to me that you’re jumping to this “replace supercarriers sometime in the future” logic while skipping over the factual matter that we already have smaller aircraft carriers and the F-35B was literally built to operate from, and currently is operating from.
Do you think it was worth it to include the B variant in order to gain the capability to operate from Marine LDAAS, given the design compromises and the value of LDAAS themselves? I get the impression it wasn’t but you may well know something I don’t since you often do on these matters.
I offered the last part as a possibility in which it might make sense in other circumstances. Maybe that muddied my message too much.
I know the question wasn’t addressed to me, but I definitely think it was “worth it”. It’s not just the Marines that get a carrier-lite out of the deal. A whole bunch of our allies (that could never have afforded a “supercarrier”) will now have the option of real serious naval airpower: Japan, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Spain, etc.
I agree that it could be worth it in that way, especially for Japan and South Korea when it comes to dealing with China. That might have been what the US was thinking or what US allies asked for in the early design phase.
Looking at the cost on Wikipedia, the F-35B costs about 116M and the F-35C costs 108M. An extra $8M/plane and 25% shorter range might be a lot cheaper than getting a fullsize carrier, especially considering how tempting a target fullsize carriers are and the fact that South Korean and Japanese carriers would be within range of Chinese ballistic missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles.
The more I think about it, the more it seems it was worth it less for the Marines than for allies, especially Asian ones.
It was worth it to include the B variant because many of the partner countries who bought into the program wanted them. So it wasn’t just for the Marine Corps. Japan is planning to buy several for their smaller helicopter carriers, and the UK is planning them for their new carriers. My guess is they won’t be the only ones.
Having VSTOL aircraft means never having to say you don’t have options.
Use them from a standard air base/airport and take off/land conventionally to save fuel/best range;
Use them from a big deck carrier and launch with catapults/recover with arresting cables to save fuel/better range;
Use them from an amphib ship for air cover/protect the landing force.
After securing a defendable area, have the helos bring in some Marston matting and you have a landing zone to operate the VSTOLs/helos/V-22 Ospreys from.
I like options.
I don’t think the F-35B is compatible with catapults or carrier arresting gear. They could still probably operate from a CVN in a pinch, but they would probably do it in STOVL mode, not utilising the catapults or arresting gear.
Yeah, the Lightning II B variant was STOVL but they couldn’t make it VTOL - apparently just not thrust-y enough to take off vertically with full fuel and weapons load weight.
My bad, I would swear I put that in the Suggestion Box 
(But are you really sure, not even “Hold my beer and watch this” once?)
Yup, the Rolls-Royce LiftSystem is rated for a maximum thrust of 41,900 lbf while hovering (18,000 lbf from the main engine nozzle swiveling down, 20,000 lbf from the lift fan, and 3,900 lbf from the roll posts). The F-35B’s empty weight is 32,300 lbs, and it has internal capacity for 13,5000 lbs of fuel and a few thousand lbs of weapons (2x GBU-32 & 2x AIM-120 I believe). External stores increase the weapons capacity to a total of 15,000 lbs.
BTW, the F-35A, based in my neck of the woods at Hill AFB, yesterday got to drop bombs in a combat air strike for the first time: U.S. Air Force F-35As conduct first combat mission > U.S. Central Command > News Article View
Despite the crash, Japan is now going to buy another 105 Lightning IIs.
That looks more like a formalization of the intent they announced last December before the crash. At the time the numbers they were looking at increasing their purchase by added up to 105.
A look at Japan’s air power situation in comparison to the Chinese threat from a couple months ago.