Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Was the Angled Flight Deck Missed on HMS Queen Elizabeth?" video.

@Tomyironmane The USMC variant will do shorter hops. Forget the gun. They'll be dropping bombs like artillery, and fly back to load more to drop where they're needed. They're not going to waste time trying to strafe anything, they'll be responding to calls for fire from the ground and taking out more important assets.
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@yolkiandeji7649 They never loaded the full load of Phoenixes for operational use. They typically took 2 Phoenixes, 2 Sparrows and 2 Sidewinders so that they didn't have to dump anything.
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@davidmalkowski7850 Bringback weight limits are always a waste. In civilian aviation, sometimes aircraft have to dump fuel or circle around burning it before landing.
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@Tomyironmane "without the kinda inconvenient collateral damage you get from 500lbs of BLAM" - Yes, that's why they made 250lb SDBs and APKWS guidance kits for the 2.75" rockets. The gun should be a weapon of last resort for the fixed wing aircraft, which has to put itself in much greater danger than a rotary wing asset to use it. "a lot of ROE the pencil pushers put in mean you have to have visual ID on targets, which is gunfight range" - You do know that aircraft carry pods, right? You have a gimbaled and stabilized video feed that lets you see things from miles away, so visual ID can be obtained from beyond what the human eye is capable of. Meanwhile A-10 pilots using visual ID strafed British and American troops because even at "gunfight range" they easily confuse friendlies for foes. That's why in close air support the attack is directed by the ground units, because pilots inevitably screw up even within visual range. EDIT: Either way, the use case for the USMC makes it clear that the F-35B will have to be directing its attention at much more critical targets. By taking care of those targets endangering troops, they'll be able to better self-protect against enemies that are too close for explosives. It makes no sense to be focusing on the close combat while you need to be covering a coastal assault. The USMC has rotary wing assets that could get closer and do that job if the F-35 is maintaining air superiority and destroying AAA threats to rotary wing.
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