F-35C use for land operations

Guys,

About the supposed "larger wing and land based F-35 variant", don't you think that if such variant had any significant advantage over the current "shorter wing" F-35A that the same F-35A would have been designed with the larger wing instead of the current "shorter wing"?

Well, my 2 cents anyway...

Bar napkin redesign — remove the wing fold, restructure wing and fuselage carry-thru for 9G, might have to add larger verticals and horizontal stab and rede/restructure for 9G also. And the net gain is…what?

Guys,

About the supposed "larger wing and land based F-35 variant", don't you think that if such variant had any significant advantage over the current "shorter wing" F-35A that the same F-35A would have been designed with the larger wing instead of the current "shorter wing"?

Well, my 2 cents anyway...

Bar napkin redesign — remove the wing fold, restructure wing and fuselage carry-thru for 9G, might have to add larger verticals and horizontal stab and rede/restructure for 9G also. And the net gain is…what?

The F-35C can maintain "9Gs" without any modification. That said, the only real option here is just a land based F-35C. Which, likely would just be the standard version of the C with a few naval items left off.

What naval items?

The F-35C can maintain "9Gs" without any modification. That said, the only real option here is just a land based F-35C. Which, likely would just be the standard version of the C with a few naval items left off.

I'm not sure anybody would be interested in paying for such a variant. Hornets and Super Hornets have been used by many nations for land-based operations (Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Finland, Kuwait and Spain) without any of those naval items really left off. AFAIK, they all still had the same undercarriage, tailhook, folding wings and catapult attachments etc as US Navy aircraft. There was F-18L land-based variant in the works, but nobody was so interested in that variant to be developed into operational aircraft.

Guys,

About the supposed "larger wing and land based F-35 variant", don't you think that if such variant had any significant advantage over the current "shorter wing" F-35A that the same F-35A would have been designed with the larger wing instead of the current "shorter wing"?

Well, my 2 cents anyway...

Bar napkin redesign — remove the wing fold, restructure wing and fuselage carry-thru for 9G, might have to add larger verticals and horizontal stab and rede/restructure for 9G also. And the net gain is…what?

And again don't forget that larger wings, larger verticals and horizontal stab increase drag and also reduces roll rate. And that's probably why the F-35A was designed with smaller ones in the first place.

The F-35C can maintain "9Gs" without any modification. That said, the only real option here is just a land based F-35C. Which, likely would just be the standard version of the C with a few naval items left off.

Wow. So the F-35C can pull a full 1.5G's above it's spec? Those sneaky nasal radiators... slipping such an improvement past all the aerospace journos, POGO, naysayers, Congress critters etc. I can only stand and

“…don't forget that larger wings, larger verticals and horizontal stab increase drag…”



“and also reduces roll rate.”

Nope. ‘C’ actually a little better there.

I’ve been trying to ‘coach’ some of you thru this subject since it was more than adequately covered 10 YEARS AGO.

There are (were) many, many design options considered waaay back in JAST and the concept dev work that occurred between the Aug ‘95 JROC and contract award in 2001. Big wing for the USAF wasn’t an attractive option for the USAF because (in simple terms) it added weight (ie $$) and degraded performance. I guarantee the USAF analyzed and deliberated these things in painstaking detail.

Nope. ‘C’ actually a little better there.

Nope. The 'C' turns better at slower speeds due to using Pitch movement but not in terms of Roll.

Big wing for the USAF wasn’t an attractive option for the USAF because (in simple terms) it added weight (ie $$) and degraded performance.

There you go. You're actually saying the same thing as I (albeit using different words/semantics).

ric, wrt roll rate, my long time colleague(s) who have flown all three jets tell me otherwise. You can choose to believe what you want. I think there is public comment to that effect as well. I’m not gonna look for it.

@quicksilver,

I'm using known (physics) data such as this in order to reach my conclusion:
https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly ... ct-a-wing/

So a longer wing generally has less roll rate, and a shorter wing has more roll rate.

And since we're talking about 2 variants of the same base aircraft - the F-35 - then I imagined the above to be true when applied to both the F-35C and F-35A.

However, if you really have any information that contradicts what I said above about the F-35C roll rate (compared to the F-35A) and which proves me wrong then I would really appreciate and thank you if you could share it.

Here’s a little something to increase your knowledge —

https://www.codeonemagazine.com/f35_art ... tem_id=187

In particular. pay close attention to this phrase, and the discussion about aircraft w fbw control systems —

“The dynamic response – the way the airplane responds to our control inputs – is also created artificially. That response can, in fact, be just about anything we want, since it’s determined by software…not nature.”

Thanks quicksilver. I will definitely check that out.

Dang it... I was out running errands and had no opportunity to get the popcorn...

Gotta love it when a NBT,NDT type tries arguing with a jenn-you-wine, bohnah-fide nasal radiator... citing the boldmethod as his basis of argument, no less.

I'm not sure anybody would be interested in paying for such a variant. Hornets and Super Hornets have been used by many nations for land-based operations (Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Finland, Kuwait and Spain) without any of those naval items really left off.

We can also take a look how badly Super Hornet has sold to further assess the likelihood of non-carrier operators wanting to pay extra for something else than F-35A. B seems to be stuck in surprisingly small number sold, it at least has more significant difference but with perhaps bigger drawbacks. Only USA and France building proper carriers seems to be the soft limit of C sales.

Soft controls do not override the laws of physics or limits of engineering. Nor do they overcome limits of the human body. If the FCS has the -C able to roll better than the -A, that definitely is counter-intuitive. It can be for reasons that we'll never know. It could be as simple that leadership of services involved set the limits in testing and found it unworthwhile to certify beyond those criteria.