(Luft) Lockheed Martin F-35 - Lightning II

[revan]

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://breakingdefense.com/2016/02/good-bye-uclass-hello-unmanned-tanker-more-f-35cs-in-2017-budget/">http://breakingdefense.com/2016/02/good ... 17-budget/</a><!-- m -->

Good-Bye, UCLASS; Hello, Unmanned Tanker, More F-35Cs In 2017 Budget

PENTAGON: After more than a year of intense debate over whether the Navy’s future UCLASS drone should be a long-range stealth bomber or a lightly armed scout, the Defense Department has chosen — neither. Instead, the 2017 budget proposes a program that is less ambitious than either version of UCLASS but, to their mind, more immediately useful than either: an unmanned, carrier-launched aerial refueling tanker.

“What you’re going to see is not a UCLASS [Unmanned Carrier-Launched Strike & Surveillance aircraft] anymore: It’s a carrier-based tanker that is going to be integrated into the carrier air wing,” a senior defense official told me....


...Given rising threats from Russia and China, he said, “we need to get more stealth on the carrier deck in the early ’20s” — too short a timeline to develop an all-new aircraft.....

Ah ja und zu der Prophezeiten Stückzahlen Reduzierung bei der F35. :mrgreen:

...So “we decided to accelerate F-35C buys,” the official said. “Some people would say, ‘let’s go all in on the UCLASS and make it stealthy,’ but if you did that, you wouldn’t be able to get can the stealth on the deck as fast. There’s just no way you could have done it.”...