Dragon029 wrote:
Boeing also says that their design considerably exceeds the CBARS requirements due to it originally being designed for UCLASS (which would have had to accommodate an internal weapons bay, etc), before modifying it.
Long wings and elevators for efficient high-alt slow loiter.
They wont put tanks and pods on it, that would really mess up its RCS and ruin its deploy speed and efficient loiter endurance.
Looks like it will be a single hose basket out of its rear, but with auto-tanking to speed things up.
Hidden survivable endurance, handy off-load capacity. 16,000 lb of fuel will keep a flight of 4 F-35 going for at least 7O mins at high-altitude. Time enough to get to another tanker before recovery
So, three tanker loads for a long-range strike flight of 4 x F-35C. One drink on the way, and two drinks on the way back (~8 hr flight).
Potentially delivering 48 x SDB (bye-bye air base), or else 8 x JSM, or 8 x JSOW (bye-bye fleet base).