Your faith in USMC doctrine is touching. The reality of keeping a fleet free from tracking is something else.

And exactly what can an MEU accomplish at the on-paper HHH max radius of an F-35B?

You don’t need a navy to have ASCMs.

when it’s the only thing you have then the presence of a supersonic VLO STOVL fighter on it’s deck will be greatly appreciated.

However, the times when you need a (marginally) supersonic (sorta) VLO aircraft and don’t have a CVN available will be few and far between and fail entirely to justify the F-35B commitment, with an aircraft acquisition cost alone equivalent to 600 Super Hornets.

TVIP – I did not say it would only make one trip. But it’s going to be a busy little bee to sustain any kind of sortie rate over any kind of distance.

If you have high-value targets and denied airspace, under any remotely likely A2/AD scenario you will also face ASCMs (and probably submarines) that will put the LHA/LHD on the sea floor, absent AEW and CAP provided by a carrier group.

One V-22 supporting four F-35s? How many F-35-loads of fuel can an V-22 carry? Hint: <1. A bit like one donkey carrying food and water for four hippos.

Also, if you read the most recent DOT&E report, you will discover the status of practical work on transforming an LHA/LHD into a mini-carrier with >8 F-35s. To wit, it has not started. And how often have the Marines done “Harrier carrier” in the past 40 years?

…as well as ending world hunger, walking the dog and clearing up the pimple on your nose.

Team Typhoon (primes, radar guys, integrators) did not like the off-boresight limitations of a fixed AESA. (This is not retrospective: the first sketches of a Typhoon AESA had a repositioner.) By the time it arrives it will be Selex’s second fighter Aesa and their umpteenth X-band airborne Aesa.

As noted, Rafale already had a PESA (which, by the way, makes the Aesa transition easier) which met the user’s requirements until Meteor came along.

Clearly Aesas are not falling-off-a-log easy, but claiming (given the speed of development in electronics) that a lead of X years can’t be eroded is a simple WCSYC fallacy.

(And furthermore, such claims are an interesting contrast to the airy assumption that the F-35 EOTS in air-to-air mode will match or outperform Selex’s dedicated IRST.)

Depends how you spell “assume”.

It’s certainly “delayed” as in “later than first planned”. The issue is whether it is due to technical or industrial performance issues of the preference of the customers, with the overwhelming evidence in favor of the latter.