Forum: F-35 Armament, Stores and Tactics

Greetings! I'm not used to start topics, but a doubt is hammering me.
The JASSM and JSOW are pretty similar in lenght and diameter, but JASSM has far more range and a much heavier warhead. True, it's at least twice as heavy, but the F-35 would have no problems dealing with the extra weight, and any penalty in combat radius would be more than paid off due to the JASSM's longer range.

So the question is: how difficult would it be to modify the F-35, obviously in the ealier stages and not today, to carry the JASSM internally? The external dimensions probably wouldn't increase more than 6 inches both in length and fuselage width. Adding these minute dimensions in a fighter as large as the F-35 would have a big impact in the general design?

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To answer your question, it would be very difficult because they would have to redesign the whole airplane which is basicly what happened during the F-35 Swat program. Also their is no need to carry a medium range cruise missle internally as you are going to be launching it out side of enemy radar.

See chart showing Radar Detection Range.

http://tscm.com/rdr-hori.pdf

From a Norwegian point of view understandable

But is it worth the cost of the F35 … right at this moment?
Also all energy now is needed to get the F35 in production and operational.

After some time a possibility, but from a point of view of the US, as well as the other levelpartners, this surely is not the right moment.

And Asraam? One can argue about that, but in stead of JASSM , the UK came up with Asraam early during the F35 project.

Easier to modify the JASSM to fit inside the existing bays. With a warhead reduction and motor reduction it should be possible to build an effective standoff missile with 250k range, that can still be carried internally...

Um, you just described a JSOW-ER (F-35 internal, LO properties, 500lb warhead, multi-mode seeker, Anti-ship modes, 400+km range, and best reature yet... already flown).

True, that would require redesigning the internal bay and/or the JASSM itself to fit internally, at the cost of additional billions and further delays, when one can either hang a JASSM/JASSM-ER on the wing of an eventually IOC F-35, or on a 4.5 gen jet in the interim. As noted, such externally mounted JASSM class ordnance could be employed outside MEZ of a potential adversay. Hence the term: "holding strategic targets at risk", which is a form of deterrence enabling a counter-strike capability, despite the adversary's attempt to deny one's said counter-strike capability.

The planned similar but light class class munition intended for internal carriage would be as Spud suggested: the JSOW-ER.

What should absolutely be a requirement for medium-class operational UCAV platforms being designed today and in the near-term however, should imho be for the capacity to employ internally carried JASSM class to best exploit the force-multiplying effective range and deterrence value of the UCAV.

Thank you, guys. As I noted, I don't expect a redesign right now, just wondering if it would be hard or easy had it been figured out earlier on. Bottom line: freakin' hard. I knew of the JSOW-ER beforehand, but JASSM-ER has more than twice the range. But geogen put it nicely: design a UCAV which can carry it internally.

I see different sources giving two different "diameters" for JASSM. (The same thing goes for JSOW, which apparently is both 16 by 20 and 13 by 13.) For JASSM, it's both 18 and 25. I don't know why.

If 25" is for real, you'd be just about starting over with a whole new plane. That's 5" taller than the space between the upper hardpoint and the bay floor, and roughly the same amount too wide to fit next to the outer door's hinge unless it's mounted off-center on the hardpoint. But if it's actually 18", that's not a problem. The bay already fits an 18" JDAM with some space to spare. That just leaves the length, which is about 8" over the length of the longest weapon that currently fits.

Will the LRASM fit in the F-35's weapons bays?

SpudmanWP wrote:

Um, you just described a JSOW-ER (F-35 internal, LO properties, 500lb warhead, multi-mode seeker, Anti-ship modes, 400+km range, and best reature yet... already flown).

Only a test model has flown, it's a company funded demonstrator at present. Both JASSM (minus) and JSOW-ER would need significant development work and as a point of fact it hasn't demonstrated 400k range yet, nor that a JSOW with an additional motor on the end of could ft in an internal bay on an F-35.

There's also a significant difference in capability between a powered missile and a range boosted glide weapon, particularly with regard to terminal maneuvre capability and a significant difference in the LO properties of the 2 weapons...

@Conan:

The JSOW-ER's development and test successes are farther along than you think. The test JSOW-ER has already demonstrated a range of over 480km. It has the same outer mould line of a standard JSOW, so it fill fit just fine in the bays of the F-35. During the test it also demonstrated navigation via three-dimensional waypoints and terminal maneuvering. Btw, the JSOW-ER's motor fits in the normally empty tail section of the JSOW.

The only significant piece of development needed is an efficient fuel tanks that does not reduce the warhead size significantly (maybe a wrap-around the warhead type).

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... 110109.xml

Here are some shots of the JSOW-ER. Notice that the shape of the JSOW-ER has not changed from that of the JSOW.

From the rear:

From the side:

SpudmanWP wrote:

@Conan:

the JSOW-ER's motor fits in the normally empty tail section of the JSOW.

The only significant piece of development needed is an efficient fuel tanks that does not reduce the warhead size significantly (maybe a wrap-around the warhead type).

If you're worried about the warhead size getting reduced, I would submit that a W-80 physics package would fit nicely while leaving plenty of room for fuel and an engine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:W80_n ... arhead.jpg Whistle

SpudmanWP wrote:

@Conan:

The JSOW-ER's development and test successes are farther along than you think. The test JSOW-ER has already demonstrated a range of over 480km. It has the same outer mould line of a standard JSOW, so it fill fit just fine in the bays of the F-35. During the test it also demonstrated navigation via three-dimensional waypoints and terminal maneuvering. Btw, the JSOW-ER's motor fits in the normally empty tail section of the JSOW.

The only significant piece of development needed is an efficient fuel tanks that does not reduce the warhead size significantly (maybe a wrap-around the warhead type).

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/ ... 110109.xml

Here are some shots of the JSOW-ER. Notice that the shape of the JSOW-ER has not changed from that of the JSOW.

From the rear:

From the side:

Hence my earlier point. When they can figure out how to fit a fuel tank and a warhead into the same airframe, without changing the outer mould line and hence size of the weapon, then perhaps it might be a useful. That demonstrator only achieved what it did because it had a fuel tank replacing the warhead...

In adition to which, I'm not seeing overwhelming service enthusiasm for the idea. I'm seeing plenty for JASSM and similar large turbojet powered missiles though.

The poignant Raytheon comment about it's "terminal maneuvre" (ie: singular) and the difficulties they are going to encounter with the fuel tank issue, might be part of the reason why...

Btw, my mistake about the range. I recalled it demonstrating 260k standoff range.

Regards.

It was 260nm not 260k, simple mistake. btw, The quote was "terminal maneuvering", not "terminal maneuver" which indicated more than a singe action.

The fuel tank issue is actually a simple concept that has been done with other cruise missiles. Since the JSOW is essentially a square tube with a round bomb (a BLU-111 warhead) inside. This arrangement leaves a lot of room toward the front of the warhead (and even at the edges) for fuel. For the test, they used the hollowed out body of the BLU-111 warhead as a tank.

renatohm wrote:

Thank you, guys. As I noted, I don't expect a redesign right now, just wondering if it would be hard or easy had it been figured out earlier on. Bottom line: freakin' hard. I knew of the JSOW-ER beforehand, but JASSM-ER has more than twice the range. But geogen put it nicely: design a UCAV which can carry it internally.

In short, save the cash otherwise spent on redesigning a less-capable internally-carried JASSM, or in redesigning the F-35s weapon bay itself, and max out procurement of as many 'LO' JASSM/-ER units as you can afford to hang under the wing of current-day front-line legacy platforms and later on operational F-35s (and yep, eventually UCAV) once cleared to launch said stand-off deterrence munition.

Forum: F-35 Armament, Stores and Tactics

F-35 and JASSM