"This also leaves open the question, in an emergency or by a mistake, what happens if a F-35B lands on a different spot?"

This is sort of like saying jets were a game changer in 1944 and now it's just a factor.

"Air Superiority is going to come from sheer numbers in a state on state war, not stealth because both sides are able to defeat it "

Golden hour makes even my photos pretty.

With a 230 kt cruise speed for the SB>1 or 280 kt cruise speed for the V-280 the gunship versions of these vertical lift platforms will not be much slower than the 300 kt cruise speed of the A-10A.

Not the issue.

yah.

Tyler, please stop linking to stories with TS slides on them. Because some folks have to report that they accidently browsed somewhere with wiki leak crap and some places might still even consider it as a spill.

And having F-35s vs A-10s won't make a whit of difference against an insurgency or COIN ops. It will make a difference in a war against a near peer.

Not all the FOBs are large and not all the FOBs are operational for large fixed wing on day 1.

They do STO to get the payload needed. And while you may think it's a gimmick there are certainly scenarios where such a capability is a necessity and vastly reduces time required to get to the fight and allows those aircraft to "ground loiter" very close to the action.

Actually they do.

You could train parts of the Army to regularly operate off amphibs and do amphibious operations but then they would be Marines. Sorta anyway.

In desert storm some harriers operated on 35 miles from the front lines. In OIF they'd often take off from their 'phib, fly a mission, land at a FOB to refuel and rearm, fly another mission and then fly home. That increased their availability to ground commanders for CAS.

A lot of other platforms can deliver 500lb+ loads including the F-35. Whether the helo has more on station time depends on the distance difference between the A-10 base and the helo base. The speed difference is in favor of the Ah-64 in terms of precise CAS support if the helo base is no more distant (in terms of…

Which threats can't we handle with F-35 and not the A-10? Permissive COIN CAS? I'd rather have a helo than an A-10. One that can hover and kill individuals trying to flank my position using gullies and goat paths.

Folks here seem to love the gun on the A-10 but you know which guns works better for COIN CAS?

"So we only are planning to fight a major peer state competitor even though we have not done that for decades and decades."

110 degree AOA and -3G to 9G+s from the Aviation Week article.

I've always wondered why the UH-1Y over a Blackhawk/Knighthawk variant and the only thing I can come up with is so Bell stays in military helo business.