sealordlawrence said:
Wrong way of looking at it. Fuel reserves are not determined by an arbitrary percentage, rather a certain amount is required for a certain specified requirement for loiter and go around. Consequently an aircraft with a larger fuel load and greater endurance will require a lower percentage. Given the dramatically greater range the F-35 has over early model Hornets (courtesy in large part to its greater fuel load) the claimed smaller reserve fuel margins are entirely believable.
The fuel reserve figure is not arbitrary. The USN baseline standard for reserves is 5% of maximum internal fuel and 20 minutes flying time. For an aircraft with the fuel load and endurance of the F-35C this combination comes in at about 15-20% of internal fuel.
But that is standard recovery after weapons expenditure and in the pleasant conditions of the American seaboard. Add in weapons retention, hot Persian Gulf air and additional safety margins often added by commanders and you see where the 25% comes from. For an aircraft with a lower cycle time like the Hornet and Super Hornet the landing reserve is even higher.
The 5-10% margins promoted by the F-35 Project Office are paper figures for promoting the concept that the aircraft brings lots of extra range capability to the Navy’s Tacair to garner congressional support. It’s what they’ve got to spin to get the money to pay for the planes which is all based around a 600 NM strike radius requirement. It would appear the UK Government has leveraged this political argument to provide an apparent excuse for their massive cuts to carrier capability.
sealordlawrence said:
Slash is an excessive word for the reduction in sortie rates, especially when UK strike packages now rarely if ever exceed 4 aircraft and the ships themselves are unlikely to ever carry many more than 30 aircraft with standard configuration being less.
Slash is entirely accurate. All things being equal between two CVFs, one with F-35Bs and the other with F-35Cs will see the following discrepancies in sortie generation in a single 24 hour period:
F-35C air wing: Within a 14 hours flying period can launch 6 sequential packages around 2 hours apart each of 18 aircraft.
F-35B air wing: Within a 24 hours flying period can launch 144 missions of any number and time separation as long as each package does not exceed 36 aircraft
Apart from the 25% reduction in total sorties the F-35C is limited in its overall flight operations time by flight deck crew and mechanical fatigue and must launch and recover in cycles to sustain flight operations on a crowed CATOBAR deck. The F-35B carrier can launch at any time of the day and any number of aircraft from one to 36 and still accommodate flexible recoveries and regeneration of sorties.
This is the advantage STVOL brings to a carrier. The ability to operate a flight deck while simultaneously launching, recovering and regenerating aircraft without re-spoting. And to do so for extended periods of times due to much lower crew and mechanical demands.
