"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.
And...
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.
5 comments:
Good find, Eric.
Willing to stake your reputation on that EW claim, General? Easy to say when you'll be several Commandants out of office and long retired (or more likely, long dead of extreme old age) before a pod is operational on the F35B. In fact, I'd bet on 'never'.
"'It's out of Schlitz,' Gen. James Amos, the Marine Corps Commandant, said of the Prowler in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee."
When your country's military command structure end up resorting to stale forty year old beer marketing slogans while testifying to Congress, they're not only out of beer, they're out of ideas.
"... an F-35B 'has about, probably, 85 percent' of the capability of the latest Prowler, [Amos claimed]"
About, probably, 85 percent of the capability of a Prowler, says the Commandant.
Except that the Prowler is extensively combat-proven, whereas the F-35 is not even civilian-test-proven. The F-35 will not be fully tested and combat-ready for another five years. Minimum.
And whereas the Prowler has three ECMO officers to perform the very complicated tradecraft of electronic warfare in real time in flight, the F-35 forces the one officer aboard to focus simultaneously upon flying the jet and doing the specialized jobs of three ECMO officers on top of that.
Not to mention that the Prowler's range and endurance completely dwarf that of the F-35.
But, yes, these minor quibbles notwithstanding, the two aircraft are essentially the same for all practical purposes.
Wow. I am starting to be pulled into agreement with the JUST SO FAILED crowd... The Prowler has so many advantages as a four-seat, subsonic, heavy lift jet that the F-35 could only dream of. Physics is a witch.
Yes electronics are getting smaller and lighter, but that's not enough.
Wow. The other services like to say, "Marines are dumb." Well their boss just made that appear as fact.
"The Prowler has so many advantages as a four-seat, subsonic, heavy lift jet that the F-35 could only dream of. Physics is a witch."
It is a witch! so is age, and when a 40 year old airplane is spending more time in the hanger than in the air, to the point that it can no longer be trusted should war come, 85 percent is better than ZERO
I don't know why this is is complicated. did we really think that the EA-6B was supposed to serve for 80-90 years? if so why did the Navy invent the Growler?
"Yes electronics are getting smaller and lighter, but that's not enough."
So an EA-18G is not as good as a Prowler? Good to know.
At least the Growler has a backseater.
The argument is directed at the JSF which won't cut it in EW.
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