So, are you calling something labelled F/A a multirole, right?

A plane is multirole if it was designed to simultaneously do a wide variety of roles from A2A, A2G, ASW, Recon, etc and has nothing to do with what a particular service decides to name it (ie F/A).

The F-16 & F-18 have been designed for exactly this type of mission set. In the US where we have the luxury of having the F-15/22, we use our F-16s primarily in the A2G role. However, those units still train for A2A and are often called upon for CONUS air policing missions. In the RotW, since they don’t have anything better than the F-16 (except Israel), they are more concerned with the F-16’s A2A capabilities (ie NATO Air Policing missions and homeland defense). In that same vein the US uses it’s F-18s mostly for A2G but the RotW (Finland, Canada, Spain, Australia, etc) use them more for A2A.

The F-35 will need the same EW support and tanker support.. And when on internal load only, they will be sitting ducks with no A-A weaponry, at all, so they will also need escort, just like everyone else.

lol.. only in Bizarro World.

The F-35C outranges the Superhornet by a significant margin and the stance of the Dod, Navy, and JPO is that the F-35C is designed NOT to require EW support. Besides, it outranges the Growler by larger margins than it does the Superhornet so teh Growler would need even more IFR to keep up.

whole array of CAS, Assault, light bombe, deep striker and strike fighters + just one model of multirole fighter, :

You do realize that between the F-16 & 18, the vast majority of the fighters being replaced are multirole right now, right?

Economy of scale is a justification people are using without understanding it.

The DoD & JPO talk about it and they know what they’re talking about.

A product you produce 1000 time is not 50 % cheaper than a produce you produce 500 time.

I never said 50%. Whatever the percentage it, it’s still cheaper

So 8 % less for a variant that have less than 50% commonality and that will require much more than 1 year of dev. It deserve to a look.

Stop talking “production” commodity as the difference is negligible in an automated (ie CnC) production environment. The real cost savings are in Lifetime support. No matter how you slice it, the extra cost of dev will be much cheaper than the lost EoS savings and increased support that a SH requires.

Well it’s simple.

If the C remains then the lifetime cost of parts & upgrades is cheaper for the A/B since more planes are ordering LRUs and other parts (radar, engine, avionics, actuators, EOTS, EODAS, CNI, ESW, etc).

You seem to be confusing the development cost of the C and the “death spiral” which deals with purchase and support of the program as a whole. If you cancel the C the only thing you will save the program is the final 1 yr of C development. Against that you will incur increased costs associated with decreasing the economy of scale savings as mentioned above and you will also increase the cost to the USN as a whole since they would now need to fly an all SH force that will need more support any time it actually needs to do its job.

I think we got off on too much of a tangent… I was just trying to show that the F-16 –> Falcon-21++ would not have been able to be done in the same vein as the Classic Hornet –> Super Hornet.

The “C” has the least commonality. Cutting the F-35C will not bring about a “death spiral”. The planned production of 260 “C” variant represents 8% of the F-35 planned production numbers.

There are two kinds of “Commonality”, Production and Sustainment.

While Production of the C differs from the others the most, it’s limited to structural parts that are only made once, for all intents & purposes.

For the rest of it’s life, the C will share pretty much all of its LRUs (is sustainment parts) with the A and B (Engine, radar, avionics, computer [even the code is the same], seat, helmets, CNI [radio], ESM, EOTS, EODAS, dispensers, weapon ejectors, etc).

They chose the B to replace the Harriers but have not picked a Tornado replacement yet.

While Italy planned on the F-35 replacing it’s Tornadoes, the UK has not said as much yet.