"Military And Military Sub-Plane" author: Lu Zhi
The stealth fighter is the main battle weapon pursued by the world's military powers, and the fighter with the stealth attribute bonus has a considerable advantage in combat. And recently Israel has planned to install a secondary fuel tank on its stealth F35 fighter jet to obtain a longer range. So is it necessary for the stealth fighter to be equipped with a secondary fuel tank?
▲Image source: Network.
The F35 fighter is a stealth multi-role fighter developed by the United States after the F22 fighter, both from Lockheed, but the actual difference is still relatively obvious, the F22 fighter is a pure air superiority fighter, basically do not have much ground attack capability, and can not use larger heavy attack weapons. As a combination of F22, F35 is similar to the previous F16 in terms of positioning. In fact, the F35 project was originally called the JSF program, that is, the Joint Strike Fighter, which is equivalent to saying that the F35 is a combat attack aircraft. There are three F35 models in total, mainly using the Air Force's F35A.
There's a problem here. The size of the F35A is actually relatively small, in fact, the length is only 15.7 meters, the wingspan is 11 meters, and the wing area is 43 square meters. However, its empty weight reached 13.29 tons, and the maximum take-off weight was 31.75 tons. In contrast, the F15 has an empty weight of only 12.97 tons, and the maximum take-off weight is only 30.8 tons. The F15E, a fighter-bomber version derived from the F15, weighs more than the F35A. So there are many different views on the classification of the F35A, in terms of size it is indeed a light fighter, similar to the F16, but in terms of weight, it is even heavier than the air-superiority F15, so it is not too much to call the F35A a small fighter-bomber.
▲The biggest advantage of the F35 is dozens of large ammunition compartments. Image source: Network.
The F35 project was developed with the participation of many countries, including Israel. Israel ordered a total of 50 F35s, with a total of 33 delivered until March of this year. Israel's F35 is called F35I, which is different from the F35A used by other countries, including the use of weapons and electronic equipment developed by Israel itself, and some of the structure has changed, and Israel can even change some of the structure itself. After Israel was equipped with the F35I, it had an absolute technical advantage over other countries around it. But Israel faces another problem, which is that the F35I may not be far enough. As we all know, one of Israel's biggest rivals is Iran, which needs to use the F35I's stealth capabilities to attack Iran's key targets. In fact, Israel itself is equipped with tankers, 7 Boeing 707 tankers and 4 KC130 tankers. However, if you look at the map, you can see that Israel's land area is very small, and in the case that tankers cannot interfere with other countries, the use of tankers will not have any essential impact on the range of the aircraft, of course, in wartime this is another problem.
▲Image source: Network.
Although the F35I is relatively heavy, the actual fuselage size is small, resulting in a small volume inside the fuselage, and there are also bomb bays that encroach on space. Therefore, according to the currently publicly available data, Israel's F35I fighter has a combat radius of only about 1200 kilometers while relying on in-flight fuel, which is the level of a typical light fighter. In this case, there are only two ways to increase the combat radius and range of the F35I, either by installing a conformal fuel tank that can take into account a certain stealth capability, or by crudely using the auxiliary fuel tank directly at the external point. The use of conformal fuel tanks can ensure the aerodynamic layout of the aircraft, but the impact on stealth ability is still relatively large. Although the use of the auxiliary fuel tank encroaches on the external pylon and increases the flight resistance, the auxiliary fuel tank can be completely discarded before entering the battle to ensure the stealth ability of the aircraft as much as possible. Therefore, many foreign experts also said that the use of auxiliary fuel tank is a better choice. So we speculate that The reason why Israel uses external conformal fuel tanks may be that it can balance stealth capability and bomb load as well as range.
▲Image source: Network.
From here, you can see the shortcomings of the F35 series fighter, although it is very heavy, but after all, it is a small aircraft, and it is still very difficult to really act as a stealth bomber. The United States has given the F35 too many tasks and capabilities, resulting in the F35 being miserable, seemingly taking care of everything, but not too much there. On the other hand, the mainland has now exposed a two-seat version of the J-20, although not necessarily a fighter-bomber version, but the potential of two-seat large aircraft is recognized. There is a lot of news circulating on the Internet that the mainland will develop the JH-XX stealth fighter-bomber, similar to the previous American FB22. From the current point of view, the relatively large advanced stealth fighter-bomber is a better choice than the F35 and other fighters that are getting fatter and fatter, and once the multi-purpose ability of the fighter is too good, it will become blurred. If technology and economy permit, it would be better to develop a stealth twin-engine fighter-bomber, which would have both a sufficient bomb load and a very long range, and a stealth capability that would be much smarter than making a fuss over a small fuselage like the F35A.
▲Image source: Network.