‘Nuclear sharing’ is an intrinsic element of the non-proliferation regime. It is essentially a bribe from Washington to the recipient states so that they do not feel compelled to develop nuclear weapons of their own accord.

However, where did you heard that the SE would have had less range and less payload?

The IWBs were to replace the existing CFTs, reducing range.

3 ton aircraft with 16 ton payload, Swedish engineering is astonishing. 😉

Nimitz size class evolved precisely to fight a WW.

Yeah but that wasn’t the question. It was “would you rather have one larger carrier or two smaller ones?”

I would love to see an internal W-bay on the Su-34M 🙂

Why? T-50 already has that. The reason Su-34 will continue to be desirable after T-50 enters service is because it can haul a truckload of stuff and there are a variety of missions for which VLO isn’t particularly advantageous (including the Growler role I alluded to earlier). Limiting payload capacity and flexibility via an internal weapons bay would be a step backwards, or at least an expensive step sideways.

Same reason I always thought F-15SE was a fool’s errand, incidentally. Or at least the IWB’s that were the centrepiece of the proposal: “let’s take an aircraft whose chief distinguishing characteristics are range and payload and take away range and payload.”

“Greed” has nothing to do with weapon system development. The development contract specifically defines the percentage of profit. For a Pentagon program, profit is typically 7-8% during development and 10-12 % for sustaining engineering after the production line closes and jets are in the field.

Socialism. 😮

But this isn’t what the Fighter Mafia advocates for. The FM supports lightweight designs with minimal tech/sensors, very low cost, and only short range weapons.

Yeah, umm, that might’ve been the case fifty years ago, but it’s not an accurate characterisation of those who’re suspicious of the recent attitude of many Americans that speed and agility are irrelevant*. The proposed alternatives to F-35 are not F-16A but rather a variety of solutions according to customer requirements and circumstances, ranging from Gripen E/F to evolved Rafale/Typhoon/Super Hornet to medium-weight VLO designs that haven’t had their performance compromised by extraneous requirements (J-31, AMCA, KF-X) to UCAVs and F-22E!

The truth is, nobody is going to follow the path laid down by F-35: not the Russians, Chinese, Europeans, Indians, Japanese, Turks, or Koreans. F-35 is a very strange aircraft emerging from a unique set of circumstances the United States found itself in in the mid-1990s and the assumptions that followed from that — assumptions that don’t, as it turns out, actually bear much relation to the world the aircraft will find itself operating in. Decades from now, we’ll look back at the variety of manned VLO platforms in service and F-35 will stick out like a sore thumb.

But hey, it’ll do wonders against Iran.

* An attitude that we can expect to vanish as soon as the F/A-XX requirements firm up, much as it vanishes today whenever the F-22 is conjured from the ether.

MiG-23s are gone. MiG-25s and Canberras went last decade too.

MiG-21, Harrier, and MiG-27 next on the chopping block. Some MiG-21 variants gone already.