NothingNow
Banned
It's not necessarily going to melt it, but it definitely will spall the hell out of any regular concrete surface it's operating on, given the heat and pressure involved (It's explained here, but needless to say, thermal lag is a bitch.)You're kidding right?
I thought the whole LAVA-HOT-MELTING myth for the F-35B has been done to death by now and sufficiently invalidated months, if not a year+ ago.
That's why the Navy had to put new deck coatings on any ship doing testing on the F-35B, and why the Marines spent all that money on fancy new refractory concrete or aluminium landing pads on any base hosting the F-35B.
Even so, the F-35B can take off from an amphib and has proven this. The A-10? Not so.
No matter how you try to spin it, the A-10 is a CTOL airforce plane whilst the F-35B is a STOVL USMC plane capable of things the A-10 can only dream about, such as taking off from a 250 meters amphib ship.
Which is perfectly fine, given that it'd at most cost 1/4-1/5 what the F-35B does (maybe 1/3 if flyaway costs really go down, which at this point would be a miracle akin to the resurrection.) All the A-10 needs is a kilometer long landing strip and a dirt apron. Maybe a couple tents and a tarp to keep the ground crew from getting soaked if they've got to do maintenance in the rain.
Anything with a radar absorbant coating is going to require a hell of a lot more to remain operational, and for a CAS aircraft that is expected to operate from forward airbases, all that added logistical burden really isn't acceptable. Just peachy for a carrier based aircraft, but that's a completely different set of logistical requirements.
Seriously, you're not so much making a case for the F-35B being an awesome CAS bird as you are that the Gripen or an old Skyhawk is much better suited to the role.
That you have. However, the free LITENING pod was with a hypothetical $25 million dollar A-10, which sure as hell is realistic. Maybe not exactly profitable for the manufacturer (the LITENING pod pretty much consumed the profit margin I figured in over Fairchild's profits from construction back in the day,) but the real money's in the support contracts, and there'd definitely be a mark-up.I think my point that 20 mln USD for a new A-10 is unrealistic has been made sufficiently.