Call me a fool, But it seems that the F35 concept is outdated…

There is this question that puzzles my mind.

The F35 is a mere compromise. It had to be stealth, vtol and cheap.
To meet all these, the aircraft was never meant to have all the potential performance, a 4rth or 5fth gen fighter could accomplish.
The idea was that being stealth, ultimate performances were of second priority.
And to keep the cost even lower, stealth capability was mostly limited to only when the AC carries a “rather small internal payload”.
No problem with that too. During the first days of a conflict the F35 carrying only small ordinances, but in full stealth, would knock out enemy air defenses, radars missiles, AAA etc, to open the gates for a second attack wave, this time fully loaded. Right???

The concept so far seams logical and the compromises rather acceptable.

Except for a small detail.
The development of the UNMANNED COMBAT AIR VEHICLEs…

An UCAV can be much stealthier simply by being much smaller.
It should avoid air combat but even the F35 would only carry a pair of amraams, but not sidewiders.
And what is the best way to make that first ultra-high-risk air raids? UCAVs.

Of course the absent of a pilot will degrade the versatility of the weapon.
But not much. UAVs are flown by computer auto-pilots, whistle at the same time, decision making, navigation and target picking is still possible to be done by ground based humans through sat or relay type communications.

To reach a conclusion I personally believe that a combination of a “Non Stealth but Best performance” a/c like the F-16/EF2000 with a small UCAV like the Boeing X-45A or the Dassault Neuron, pose much more potential than the F-35 lightening. And with less cost and less risk too.

greg
After 4 years of just reading, I m back……