"It's out of Schlitz," Gen. James Amos, the Marine Corps Commandant, said of the Prowler in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee. In the near term, as Prowlers retire, the Marines are adding ground-based electronic warfare systems to help fill the gap, he said, "but I think the real replacement for us is the F-35B." The Marines will develop an electronic warfare pod to augment their F-35s, Amos said, but even without such additional equipment -- just using the plane's standard built-in systems -- an F-35B "has about, probably, 85 percent" of the capability of the latest Prowler.
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The prospective adversary, of which China is the archetype, would field an "anti-access/area denial" network, a layered defense of long-range sensors and missiles, potentially backed by manned aircraft and cyberattacks. In this fight, the F-35C provides stealthy manned strike against ground targets and air-to-air defense against enemy aircraft, as well as some cyber and electronic warfare capabilities, to complement the older and unstealthy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet.
