There is a need for up to 36 more Super Hornets (and a yet to be determined number of additional Growlers.) But the Navy needs to buy many things, and aircraft must compete with those priorities. As far as the additional F-35Cs requested, that was the political part of the equation. Notice how quickly that went away. F-35C does not even compete with Super Hornet until Block 4, which is sometime next decade.

From an acquisition stand point, the plan is to get to 80-85 Million by the time full rate of production kicks in…

The current Super Hornet coming off the line is just as capable as F-35, sans stealth. And if the F/A-18E/F are purchased in the numbers envisioned for the F-35 program, the URF would be ~$50M, including ATFLIR and IRST. The F-35 has a long way to go to get to $90M for the F-35A (and important to note, the -B or -C will be significantly more expensive,) let alone the $80-85M “target” the program office is struggling to achieve. Shaving a few percentage points per year is not going to get you there by 2019.

The recent/ongoing action against ISIS/ISIL would have been unsustainable with an L-class boat with a relative handful of F-35B, and no wideband EA/EW capability or organic tanking. There is no way it could produce the operational tempo that the CVN can and does every day. This is an example of the types of actions that the US will find itself engaged in on a recurring basis – nothing smaller that an LHA/D could handle alone, except an odd one-off incident or two every 10 years.

None have been formally grounded yet, but -As at Eglin and Luke are not flying, as well as all -Bs. No official word on the -Cs, but it’s likely they are not flying at Eglin.

That is the theory at least. Developing working software is one of the largest cost drivers right now. It’s also unclear about how extensive testing will be when new software blocks and TRs are introduced, given the recent surprise trying to load software on a TR-2 aircraft. What is clear is that LM engineers underestimated the labor required to develop software for the aircraft, distribute and load increments on aircraft, and the time it takes to validate capabilities. Grossly underestimated. It might point to a cultural issue within the company, or simply that mission systems development took a back seat to airframe development.

Also, federated systems can be helpful backups. There is a story about a F-22 that lost all displays, but was able to use a radio to recover the jet because it was not entirely controlled by the mission system.

this is also why the US have troubles with their aircraft “aging prematurely”, like the F-15s that started breaking in flight…

Not quite true. In the case of the structural failure that you seem to be referencing, a manufacturing issue led to the failure over time, and not all F-15’s are affected.

”…a technical analysis of the recovered F-15C wreckage determined that the longeron didn’t meet blueprint specifications. This defect led to a series of fatigue cracks in the right upper longeron. These cracks expanded under life cycle stress, causing the longeron to fail, which initiated a catastrophic failure of the remaining support structures and led to the aircraft breaking apart in flight….”

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/aging-aircraft-usaf-f-15-fleet-grounded-04149/

I’m pretty sure Ive read that during an all out conflict where it was deemed necessary the limits would be bumped to 9 gs. The frame is as capable as any other but as you stated with the added stresses of carrier life the maintenance and airframe life would be decreased substantially.

Correct.

then why has he been allowed to cover the F-35 again?

With continued scrutiny of the F-35 program? Probably because AvWeek has some modicum of journalistic ethics. If AvWeek determined that his reporting was false, then they would have fired him – which would have no doubt pleased LM. By “suspending” him, they took the middle route. They put him on notice that his articles are causing tension with a large advertiser, and that he better be sure he gets his facts straight. AvWeek also stood up to pressure from a powerful advertiser, and reassured them that they are monitoring his work to make sure that it is fair and accurate. No doubt AvWeek pointed out that overall balance wrt the magazine’s coverage of the F-35 program is provided by the totality of the work of all their contributors.