Retiring Trident

Retiring Trident
technology “is the price of admission into the fight” as the “lethal envelope
of advanced air-defense (sic) systems continues to grow against
[existing] aircraft.” 172 In other words, the proliferation of radar guided
and cued advanced surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) means that attacks
by existing non-stealth aircraft would result in unacceptably high losses;
stealth is one approach to overcoming the threat posed by such weapons.
LO comes from carefully shaping the aircraft to reduce its radar cross-section
(RCS), using radar absorbing materials, and through the fusion of
hostile threat data to increase tactical situational awareness (SA). To
keep the RCS as low as possible for missions in high-threat areas, F-35s
carry weapons, extra fuel and electronic warfare equipment internally;
in previously designs, these items typically were carried on wing pylons.
The use of external fuel tanks, pylons and weapons significantly increases
RCS, meaning that this would only occur when the need for stealth
had been removed, e.g. through the degradation or destruction of enemy
air defences. Consequently, in assessing whether the UK could credibly
rest its deterrence posture on a free-fall bomb carried by F-35C, this
paper assumes that any mission would be conducted on internal fuel and
carrying weapons internally to ensure that the lowest possible RCS – and
therefore highest possible survivability – was achieved. 173
F-35B Development Problems
The F-35B has suffered from weight problems throughout its development,
and by 2004 was 3,000 pounds overweight – fully 9.3% of the aircraft’s
empty weight. 174 Initially, all three variants had common internal
weapons bays, but one of the trade-offs made in successfully reducing
the F-35B’s weight by 2,700 pounds 175 was the decision to shorten its
internal weapons bays. This means that the F-35B’s weapon bays are
not only too small to carry 2,000lb class UK Precision Guided Munitions
(PGM), but they are also too short for internal B61-12 carriage. 176
Therefore, in order to have a credible free-fall option from F-35, the UK
will need to use either the F-35A or F-35C. In the interests of RAF and FAA
commonality, it makes sense to operate the F-35C from land bases and
to convert both the new Queen Elizabeth-class carriers to CATOBAR configuration
to operate it. F-35C also delivers sustained through-life savings,
as the MoD estimated in SDSR 10 that replacing the complex STOVL
F-35B with the simpler – but more capable – F-35C would have reduced
through-life costs by approximately 25%. 177
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