The JSF prototypes did not have a weapons bay, the downselect for the SDB program happening around 2001-02 iirc..It would have been entirely possible to completely disassociate the primary fighter form internal carriage of the 1K and 2K class PGM’s, but apparently the main operators do not plan on doing so. Perhaps because the inventory is huge and probably also because an SDB is not a solution for every possible target. The F-35’s bays are designed with mission flexibility in mind and a lot of that has to do with the inventory of weapons at the USAF and USN’s disposal.

i know it was designed to carry 2K class JDAM but how come a bigger bay end up carry alot less weapon ? , why cant they upgrade it ? , i mean there are more space right ?
actually the only disadvantage of the pod is that it cannot carry 2K JDAM , it can still carry NSM and such though , to be able to carry 2K pounds JDAM and sacrifice ability to carry 8 AIM-120 , or 4 AIM-120 + 12 SDB is really such a waste
still do you think F-35 able to use the same pod or that pod is only for f-18 ?

Most AGM-65s have either EO or IIR seekers. Only the C and E variants were laser guided. A laser guided weapon knows the laser code it’s looking for whereas a missile with an IIR seeker doesn’t know what it’s looking for unless told before launch, or unless it has an extensive database of targets and target recognition software.

I’m not sure if the AGM-65s had INS, so even the C and E laser variants wouldn’t know where to fly to if fired before lock. Some reading around the Maverick design suggests that they needed to maintain lock from launch to strike.

Interestingly the proposed AGM-65L “Longhorn” was intended to have a datalink and LOAL.

To your first question, the answer is likely software related (see above talk about target database and target recognition). If the E version didn’t have the ATA you mentioned, you’ve answered your own question.;) Visual IIR recognition is more complicated to program than radar signature recognition.

i understand what you mean , but why is IIR more complicated than radar , radar guider missiles dont know what they looking for either ? , also MMW radar can see the 3D picture of target exactly like IIR so the target recognition likely to be the same
how come a small missiles like AGM-114 is LOAL while AGM-65 isn’t

I think the issue there is that most laser guided weapons will always be able to LOAL to a laser spot and MWR seekers (AGM-114L and Brimstone) also have a LOAL capability. Ground targets are also relatively slow compared to aircraft, so if you fire a missile at fairly short ranges to a GPS co-ordinate the MWR will be able to LOAL. Longer range equivalent A2G missiles like SPEAR have a datalink, because the range is such that the target vehicle may have moved considerably between launch and impact.

so why can’t AGM-65 do that ? , both agm-114 and AGM-65 are air to ground , both have short range , both dont have data link why , agm-114 can do LOAL but AGM-65 must be lock on target before launch ?

E, H and K I believe are IIR seeker variants with a datalink. I believe the ARH seeker variants lacked a data link.

Interestingly AGM-62 did have a datalink, which later ended up on the AGM-84E along with the IIR seeker of the AGM-65D.

AGM-84H and AGM-84K both have Automatic Target Acquisition (ATA) so they can do LOAL and can actually lock target by them self , however iam talking about the E version
AGM-84E must be manually locked on to target by pilot , it cannot do that by it self . the question is why ?
all AGM-84 version have INS so they can all go to target area without main seeker , but while the radar version can do LOAL and can lock target by them self automatically , but for the AGM-84E IIR version , pilot must do that manually in final phase of flight .r GBU-15 have exact the same problem

Mainly a datalink issue. It’s difficult to develop LOAL-capable technology without a datalink but the ASRAAM is an exception in that respect.

but how about this ?
AGM-65 can only be used in LOBL mode while AGM-114 can be used both in LOAL and LOBL , both kind of missile dont have data link or anything other than their main seeker

also what about agm-84 radar version vs AGM-84E ? why the agm-84E cannot lock on target by itself but required pilot control in terminal phase of flight

BTW does anyone know why all active radar guide missile can be LOAL but not the same for Ir guide missiles

Quite inferior according to your calculations. Its been designed around operator requirements.

Often enough to bake that capability into the Requirements

And the F-35 does provide plenty of that along with missiles

Lets just use 3 Pods and say 12 missiles are better than 4!

Where is the second pod going to come from? Where will it be fitted on the F-18E/F, what sort of performance penalty will it bring about? Even boeing that is trying its level best to sell a future version of the Rhino is not proposing anything like that. The USAF and the USN demanded mission payload flexibility and that involves certain tradeoffs. A weapons bay designed around the Aim-120 and SDB is much simpler (I wont include a JDAM here since the advanced Rhino cannot carry any missiles in that configuration) but offers less flexibility. Boeing did their best given the design constraints. A pod that would provide the sort of flexibility that the F-35 does would most likely be huge and bring even further performance limitations. Its a strap-on solution that at the moment no one seems to be interested in. They proposed a different sollution for the ” My stealth is more optimized than F-35″ F-15SE.

I don’t think we have SDB when f-35 was designed so that why the main focus was to designed weapon Bay to carry 2* big weapons, but at the moment and in the future due to the advance of SAM, 2 jdam will not even reach their target and overwhelming target with a group of SDB will be a. much better solution
actually the rhino can carry 2*500 pounds JDAM + 2 aim-120 in each pod compared to f-35 weapon Bay only 1 aim-120 and 1*500 pounds JDAM that is significant increase in both self defense and attack ability
the reason why I used 2 pod is because f-35 have 2 weapon Bay (*the rhino can carry 3 pod, but it not the Rhino that iam interested in)

The problem here is that you are using just one metric. Using a similar approach one can claim that the SH Pod/bay is not so good since it cannot carry the 2k bomb, or that with a load of one 1000 lb JDAM it cannot carry any air to air self-defense weapon. One can design a particular bay for one end of mission requirement and around missile carriage (no need to go deep into volume requirements that carrying heavy/large bombs require), however the F-35 has actually been designed around a requirement laid out by the primary customers. It therefore provides the flexibility that they requirements demanded particularly in strike missions where a strike load along with A2A protection was required.

There is no reason to believe than an Aim-9x cannot be integrated into the bays given that block 2 and beyond its a LOAL weapon and with block 3 it effectively becomes an MRAAM unless one believes that no new capability will ever be added to the F-35 over its service life.

if f-35 weapon Bay was the same as f-18 pod then it could carry 1 *1000 pounds JDAM +6 SDB + 2 aim-120 that is a lot better than 2*JDAM+2*aim-120 at the moment, more bombs, more missiles
I know that aim-9x can be added to f-35 weapon Bay, the problem with f-35 is that it carry really limited amount of weapon internally, yeah it can carry 2000 pounds JDAM but since most air defence system today can shot down JDAM very easily, then 2*2000 pounds JDAM is a lot less threatening than 12 SDB