B fuselage is not the same. It has an enormous hump behind the cockpit, shorter nozzle and a shaft in the intake, increasing drag. On the plus side, it’s missing the tail hook fairing.
Assuming area ruling is optimised on the A model, that makes the B fuselage less otimised. The C is much worse of course due to its huge wing ie not only does it have more drag due to increased wing area, its area ruling is poor. Which is nicely reflected in the revised acceleration specs.

The differences between the front aspect cross sections of the three jets is below,
[ATTACH=CONFIG]246288[/ATTACH]

The difference between A and C are just weight and wing so it is pretty clear that the wing plays the major role in a longer acceleration time from M0.8 to M1.2. While the hump on the Bee is pronounced it doesn’t have anywhere near the impact of the larger wing on the C, especially given the airframe has less weight than the C and the smaller wing of the A.

None of which supports your claim that the F35 program was less than fully funded.

Let us refresh ourselves on what my claim was.

A fully funded program that went through the worst financial crisis the world had seen since the great depression… Reality is the fiscal environment the F-35 SDD phase encountered was no better than that faced by the Rafale and Eurofighter.

So, my point stands. The fiscal environment that the F-35 has encountered was no better than that faced by the Rafale or Eurofighter. There is a distinct difference between our positions though, I have provided a number of sources to support my claims, you have provided nothing.

Without the fat fuselage the C would have been less draggy, so would have had more acceleration and supersonic speed. The wing certainly plays a role too.

There is no logic to that claim. For starters, the A/B/C model all share essentially the same fuselage cross-section but the acceleration times are all different. In that context, the only appreciable difference between them is weight for the B and weight/wing for the C. The weight difference is approximately 10% from A to B and 19% from A to C. The wing area difference is 36% between A/B and C.

I cannot see how a weight change of 19% would increase the acceleration times so markedly; especially given the times are calculated with internal loadings only. The only direct correlation is the size of the wing, which is mandated by USN for carrier landing performance (which it should be noted has been very successful).

Taking that further, the SH versus F-35C frontal aspect is the following,

F-35C carriers almost 5,000 lbs more fuel as well as 4,600 lbs of weapons all internal.

“Budget increase of US$4.6 billion.” Sure the budget was impacted. It went up.
I suspect rather strongly that the “concurrency risks” played a larger role in the LRIP numbers reduction than the budget,

The reduction in per airframe cost from increased production would probably have offset any increased concurrency costs. That is one of the main purposes of concurrency and has been proven time and again on just about every new US military aviation program for the last 30 years. The difference is that increased concurrency costs but lower production costs becomes politically untenable in a fiscally constrained environment.

handy that sequestration and the financial crisis can be blamed rather than issues with the program and design ;).

I said there were two main reasons the LRIP jets were reduced with the first being slow SDD progression. I don’t see why you have to restate what was already said. Sequestration still played a role and continues to do so. For example, the cuts mandated by sequestration in 2011 are still in effect and impacting capability today.

Counter to warnings from top military officials, the two chambers’ fiscal year 2016 budgets will likely restrict both military and domestic spending to levels agreed to in a 2011 deficit-reduction deal, according to GOP lawmakers and aides.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-to-stick-to-sequester-spending-limits-in-2016-budget-1426018538

So Saab over engineered the structure on the prototype?

Would be strange if they started with a structure on the weak side and hope that strength / vibrations “would be ok”.

Not really, It is pretty common in aerospace to engineer just enough strength into the airframe. Look for example at the civilian side of things with Boeing and Airbus either failing just short or just over their testing of wing load targets. The A380 failed within 3% of the wing load test. I don’t recall the A380 wing requiring a re-test, just some validation that strengthening had been applied to the right places.

Therefore, it is often easier to add a couple of pounds of reinforcement to the wing or structure to reach the limit than remove it when the structure has far exceeded the design specification. F-35C wing is another example with a half a pound of additional strengthening required to get the wing to the full 8,000 hr minimum design limit.

The program was fully funded as you yourself acknowledge; the prevailing fiscal situation, whatever it may have been, had zero impact on the funding for the program. Some might argue that perhaps it should have done!

Reality is that when the program was rebaselined in 2012 not only was development slowed because less aircraft were purchased for the SDD phase, but production funding, and subsequently aircraft, was removed from LRIPs.

The following from the Australian National Audit Office

The most comprehensive systems engineering review of the JSF Program to date was the 2010 Technical Baseline Review(TBR), which in January 2011 led to a budget increase of US$4.6 billion. That increase was needed to fund the program’s March 2012 cost and schedule rebaseline, which included the SDD phase being extended by three years to 2019. At the same time, budget considerations and concurrency risks drove a decision to further reduce the numbers of aircraft being produced in LRIP lots. Data from Lockheed Martin’s Earned Value Management System indicates that, since the TBR, the program has been achieving its cost and schedule goals in a more sustained manner than previously, indicating the potential for the program to continue progress within its cost and schedule parameters.

https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/g/files/net616/f/201213%20Audit%20Report%20No%206.pdf

The ANAO disagrees with you that the fiscal situation at the time had zero impact on the F-35 program. Those extra three years and less LRIP aircraft were a direct result of two things, slow SDD progression and funding issues associated with the global financial crisis and imminent sequestration.

If you are in a somewhat/relative high intensity theater like DS/ Libya. Then you allocate the needed Intel resources, like spy-sattelite, drones, on the ground assets.. what ever you have.

If you have… Intel support like this doesn’t just happen, it takes years of planning, capability, training, and exercises to get to the point where you can execute mass cruise missile strikes.

In every conflict they has mass launched cruise missile as first day strike. Why debate this.. its common knowledge.

On the contrary, that supports my position. Cruise missile strikes worked for many of the targets, but in GW1 the US still flew F-117s over Baghdad on night one dropping LBGs on high value targets. Why didn’t they use cruise missiles for these targets?

We know absolutly nothing on how F-35 would fare when going in 1st day in S-300/400 AoD, so go easy with your advs here pls.

We know that the S-300/400 uses an X-band radar for terminal guidance of the missile. We also know that most of the S-300/400 missiles use X-band radar for their own terminal guidance. From the study I posted previously, available here http://www.scienpress.com/Upload/JCM/Vol%204_1_9.pdf we know that the F-35 performs exceptionally well against X-band radar systems, so much so the average detection range for an F-16 radar was approximately 5nm. The S-300/400 radar, while higher power, will be at a longer range than an F-16 for an engagement and the respective missiles from the S-300/400 are going to have less power, range and capability than an F-16 radar.

Therefore we can make a pretty credible assessment based on the info above.

Complete nonsense.. PR, the actual combat loadout schemes will be much more modest in order to preserve airframe life..

Airframe life has little to do with it, you do not fight a conflict while attempting to preserve overall airframe limits. What it actually comes down to is practical application. There is a finite limit to the number of targets a single fighter jet can prosecute effectively. Unless you plan on launching all 40 SBDs at two or three targets that load out is a waste.

An excellent example of realistic loadouts is available at F-15e.info here, http://www.f-15e.info/joomla/weapons/loadout-configurations What we see is that an F-15E, that has the ability to haul 20,000+ of ordnance, usually goes to war with 7,000lbs or less.

A nonsensical mission, in the first place.. No one sends in manned fighters directly into heavy anti-access area. In reality you send in cruise missiles and manned fighters with stand-off weapons.

Except the F-35 has been designed for that very mission.

Using cruise missiles and manned fighters with stand-off weapons only works when your target set allows it. For targets that are mobile, pop-up or are time sensitive a manned platform becomes the superior option. When you introduce GPS jamming and other denial aspects into the battlespace, then a manned platform becomes almost mandatory.

Which of these are already integrated? JASSM is no longer on the list of weapons for certification by the end of the F-35 development program. JASSM-ER, too, is not in the pipeline for now.. Ford SDB II, the fighter will not receive the software package required to operate the bomb until 2022..

Until that time there are plenty of other platforms that can launch JASSMs etc from outside the battlespace while the USAF etc uses F-35s for precision targeting of mobile threats within an A2/AD region with the current suite of integrated weapons.