The F-35B has a top speed of Mach 1.6, an after-burning thrust of 43,000 lbs, a max take-off weight of 60,000 lbs
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By Logan Williams, Warrior Contributor
As a way to deter China, better prepare for island-hopping kinds of amphibious warfare contingencies and the need to project 5th-generation air power at Sea, the Japanese Maritime Defense Force has retroffitted and launched the JS Kaga, a destroyer turned amphibious assault ship, which was specifically outfitted with the F-35B in mind. Warrior details the arrival of Japan’s new mini-carrier in a recent article, an essay which describes some of the concepts of operation informing the ship’s emergence.
The new JS Kaga, along with Japan’s large multi-billion F-35 purchase, is a key element of how Japan’s ruling party has requested the largest defense budget in the island nation’s recent history, at least since World War Two. Japan has become the largest international customer for the F-35B platform.
The F-35B has a top speed of Mach 1.6, an after-burning thrust of 43,000 lbs, a max take-off weight of 60,000 lbs (reduced due to STO/VL functionality, the A & C variants have a max take-off of 70,000 lbs), and most importantly, a radar signature (a.k.a, radar cross-section) of 0.0015m2 at the “stealthiest.” Conversely, the F-16 is faster, with a top speed of Mach 2, although the F-35 outperforms the F-16 in nearly every other metric. The F-22, as the U.S. military’s premier air superiority fighter, has a radar cross section of .00015m2, which means that at its “stealthiest,” the F-22 has the same radar signature as a marble or a bumble bee.
Yet, these raw metrics can obscure the true ingenious of the F-35 platform.
It would be baseless to compare the F-22 to the F-35, as a measure of the performance of the F-35 platform, because the F-22 is similarly a fifth-generation aircraft designed with much of the same technologies of the F-35, but with a vastly different purpose than the F-35, in mind. The F-22 was designed as an air-to-air fighter aircraft, its singular purpose is to seize and maintain air superiority, as such, the F-22 is the “stealthiest” aircraft in the United States’ arsenal, second only to the still-in-development B-21 Raider, the successor to the B-2 stealth bomber, which is expected to have an even smaller radar cross-section despite the present lack of data, and which conducted its first test flight on 10 November 2023.
If you are looking to establish an impenetrable no-fly zone, and down enemy aircraft long before they even know that you are there (beyond-visual-range targets — BVR), the F-22 is the plane for the job; if you are looking for any other functionality, turn to the F-35. It is important to note that the F-22 is so specialized and dangerous that Congress has banned its export, even to friendly nations. It is also important to note that the F-35 is far cheaper than the F-22, the former which has a per-unit production (“fly-away”) cost of approximately $70 million (similar to that of the F/A-18E/F), and the latter which has a “fly-away” cost of double that, at approximately $143 million. Unfortunately, during the United States’ wars in the Middle East, airspace dominance was hardly a concern, so F-22 production was hindered by a re-prioritization of attack aircraft and multi-role fighters (fighter with sufficient air-to-ground attack functionality), and the F-16 as well as the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet became the backbone of the U.S. jet fleet. The F-16 is still the most common aircraft in the U.S. military, making up just under 10% of the U.S. military’s aircraft arsenal.
The F-35 outclasses all other multi-role fighters, foreign and domestic.