Thank you, a mine of information as usual.Timmymagic wrote:Yes, different sizes have been proposed over the years. For F-35B it will be the inner wing tanks only as they're cleared for the weight and are plumbed.bobp wrote:Do the planes have plumbing for external tanks.
Looks like its an LM design, but the driver is the A and I variant. Don't think the Israeli's are actually designing it. All of the talk of Israel developing conformals, other accessories or integrating weapons on F-35 seems to have come to naught to date. Israeli orders for US weapons in recent years, specifically to equip the F-35, seem to point to the Israeli's abandoning the idea, at least in the near future (and the truth is despite the hype about Israeli weapons they don't have as good A2A missiles as 9X or Amraam C and D, nothing as cheap as JDAM or SDB1 and nothing as advanced as SDB2).Ron5 wrote:Yes and a tank is under development by LM. Might or might not be based on an Israeli design. Opinions vary.
Then there is the question of qualification. Who would pay for it to be done on the F-35B's?
The size of tanks previously looked at were 460 or 480 gallons. That's a c3,500lb external store (including pylon). Which is fine for the internal pylon on all variants. The larger 600 gallon tank recently mentioned is c4,500lb (including pylon). Again ok weight wise as the internal pylons are good for 5,000lb's. You could still mount the aircraft with 2 Asraam, 2 Meteor, 2 PWIV and 8 Spear (and a gun which we're not buying..) and get off the deck. Might need a longer run up though....
As to who would pay? At present no-one. Can't imagine the USMC and UK are desperate for it right now. But its the sort of thing that a collaborative approach would pay dividends on in a few years. Get all of the B variant users together and each chuck into the pot. It won't cost as much as a complex weapons integration but still won't be super cheap.
Are you aware of any operational limits on the tanks i.e are they all supersonic?
I remember reading the smaller tanks would confer an approx 100 mile increase in ROA, have you any updates to that?