Marine Corps F-35Cs Make First Arrested Landings At An Expeditionary Airfield09 Dec 2020 James Deboer"
When it comes to austere operations, the F-35C shows it can do much of what the F-35B can and more as the Marines gear up for a fight in the Pacific....
...Preparing the F-35C for
EABO was no easy task. Under the leadership of its commanding officer, Lt Col Brendan Walsh, VMFA-314 chose Major Robert ‘Murphy’ Ahern to get the job done. Major Ahern began planning the event several months ago and had to get all the right parties involved.
First, the squadron was certified to do the “hot” reload while operating out of Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma during Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course 1-21 in Arizona in October. Next, it had to get the clearance to use the M-31 arresting gear for the F-35C. This involved getting approval from Lockheed Martin and the Joint Program Office (JPO) to land within a certain envelope.
“This is the first time we have combined a hot reload with an arresting gear landing in the F-35C,” Major Ahern explained. “The whole point was to show that while, yes, the F-35B can hover and land on a prepared surface, for us operating with a larger wing area and more weapons capability added to a much longer range than the F-35B, we can do the expeditionary mission much in the same way the F/A-18 Hornet would, where you have a runway of about 3,000 feet and an MWSS that has the ability to set up the arresting gear.
Depending on how heavy the aircraft are on takeoff, they usually need between 2,000 and 3,000 feet of runway. Now they have weapons, fuel, and way better range than the F-35B and can stay in the fight longer."
“Lockheed Martin and the JPO approved the envelope and were all very responsive to make it happen. We are about four years ahead of schedule from when they thought they would test these concepts. They kept it very similar to
max trap weight that is seen on the ship, so the risk was small, so all of the engineers did their behind-the-scenes numbers very quickly. We came in at
150 knots at roughly 45,000 pounds.”...
...the first of the two F-35Cs were flying overhead getting set to make history as the first example of this variant to use the M-31 arresting gear. Flying the first F-35C was Major Ahern, who made a hard break over the airfield much like an approach to an aircraft carrier.
Lining up for the arresting gear, Major Ahern touched down a few hundred feet before the gear before catching the sole wire. Unlike aircraft carriers that use three or four wires, the M-31 gear has just one. With the landing perfectly executed, Ahern raised the tailhook and let go of the wire, while members of the MWSS quickly checked over the gear before the second pilot touched down....
...Both the F-35B and F-35C will provide the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF) commanders with operational flexibility and tactical supremacy under many scenarios. But the roughly 7,000 pounds of additional fuel that the F-35C carries, as well as the ability to carry two 2,000-pound bombs compared to two 1,000-pound bombs in the F-35B, and now the F-35C's proven ability for short field austere operations thanks to VMFA-314's exploits, will make for some tough procurement decisions as the Pentagon looks increasingly at distributed operations in the Pacific."
Source: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3 ... y-airfield 
10 Dec 2020, 03:06
Thanks to 'Gums' post above we have these tidbits of text 'bout 
I guess instead of a go-no go, you have a go-eject or at best a no go of about 50 knots. A nicely simplified decision making process and any wreckage will be far enough off the end of the runway to allow for continued ops. Single-engine CTOL always reduces takeoffs to the basics.
