The F-35/s future role is as a sensor platform and networking hub for a group of lighter-weight, cheaper, and more expendable drones. Eventually the F-35 will also be unmanned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kratos_XQ-58_Valkyrie

That thing should be called Valkryie II. The Valkyrie was a much more impressive aircraft, an almost legend that is too often forgotten.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie

The Valkyrie was a legend. Looks like it inspired the concord.

Isn’t a Global Hawk, Triton, or similar with high altitude loiter capabilities and StarLink support not a more pragmatic option for such a role? They’re also unmanned. If carrier support is required, there’s the X-47B/X-47C vehicle.

Platforms should go high and slow (but faster when necessary, when in range of bad times). Ordinance should go fast, very fast, with no people onboard.

UAVs like the Global Hawk or Triton aren't large enough to be fast enough to be useful against enemy fighters. As for StarLink, all relevant LEO satellites are coming down in the early stages of any open combat between the US and a near-peer adversary. To contest air superiority requires a platform that goes very fast and can see very far. To fight enemy fighters or to strike ground targets in places without air superiority a stealth fighter large enough to be fast and to carry a long-range sensing and jamming suite is needed.

My point is that fighters are obsolete. Sensor platforms get you the target, long range ordinance kills the target. Dog fights are dead like the SR71, which was obsoleted by orbital surveillance. See from afar, kill from afar, and stop trying to put a human onboard.

That's what Lockheed-Martin has been saying, but I'm pretty sure the F-35 is still deployed along-side an AWACS. And with more and better satellite imagery & communication. I just don't see why we need this extremely capable and expensive flying network router.

AWACS can be shot down by near-peer adversaries. And satellites travel in known orbits and have no capacity to evade. It's well known at this point that nations that can make current-generation fighter jets can also shoot down satellites.

Making a fighter jet is way harder than hitting a satellite with a few grams worth of kinetic projectile (or, more accurately, letting the satellite run into a field them).

I wouldn't bet on any nation not being able to pull that off. In fact I can think of some teams of university students who could probably hit a Starlink satellite if you gave them some funding.

Any nuclear armed adversary could knock out a whole hemisphere of starlinks with a single missile.

The AWACS for an F-35 in terms of providing an air picture is less necessary. They are still command and control and provide services which may not be radar related. They have lots of people that can process data and taskings. So don't let the idea that they are being used with an AWACS mean they require an AWACS.

And for the space discussion, nothing is as real time as a fighter's sensors airborne, it's pretty bad how long some data can take to reach a platform that can use that data. The military has a problem right now with distributing data real time, they are working to solve that problem. You can find a lot of articles on the ABMS. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2336618/adva...

And the f-35 is neither. It is the complement to the f-22, not its replacement. There are more effective air superiority fighters out there for far less money.

Except we stopped F-22 production to focus on replacing it with the F-35

Not true. This topic is more complex then simply replacing the F-22 with F-35 as most government decisions on multi-million dollar projects with state interests in mind are.

The F-22 was cancelled because the military thought that they didn't needed to spend the money on air superiority fighters and wanted to use the money elsewhere (drones and bombers). I don't think the F-35 was in the discussion that much... they fired the top leaders of the Air Force at this time.

Robert Gates killed the F-22 and fired the chief of staff of the Air Force Moseley and secretary Wynne. Since then we knew it was a mistake and tried to restart the F-22 line. It didn't make sense for cost.

Gates has his own book Duty which references this quite a bit and is a great political read https://www.amazon.com/Duty-Memoirs-Secretary-at-War/dp/0307...

And there is another book that argues it was a bad idea. https://www.amazon.com/Air-Power-Abandoned-Betrayal-Americas...

Also:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20472/retired-general-...

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/05/10...

This one is funny because they talk about the increased costs of the B-2 due to cutting it early..... as they cut the F-22.

https://www.airforcemag.com/schwartz-in-memoir-says-f-22-was...

F-35 combat range is "only" 1000km, and will get smaller with heavier munitions.

Say, you get 500km range if you want to drop 20t of bombs, have 8 planes, and want to have safety margins.

500km is easily within the range of even the most primitive tactical missile like Oka, and retaliatory airstrikes.

On other hand, you will have a very busy forward airfield, with tiny airstrip, with a lot of very expensive planes, and long times to sortie, and very close to the enemy.