HASC says F-35 lacks range to be of use to the Carrier Battle Group..

via Stars and Stripes...

The Navy’s newest fighter jet, the stealthy F-35C, may not have the range it needs to strike enemy targets, the House Armed Services Committee said in a new report, raising troubling questions about whether the multibillion-dollar program is already outpaced by threats.

And critics say the Navy fighter — part of the Joint Strike Fighter initiative, the most expensive weapons program in history — may actually have been out of date years ago.

Story here. 

Hmm.  The Gorilla in the room is the report commissioned by the SecDef that ordered a comparison of the Super Hornet vs F-35C.

That report still hasn't been released.

But back on story.  The Navy is working the problem of carrier strike, attempting to solve the riddle of Chinese naval attack systems and even working on distributed attack.

F-35 fanboys will attempt to tout all the work done as being "enabled" by the F-35 but that's just another lie.

The same applies to the range issue.  The new UAV will unburden the Super Hornet from refueling duties and will put carrier strike back in the game.

The Navy is on it.

The problem is that the F-35 isn't central to the solution to the problems they face.  Quite honestly its probably an albatross around the neck of Carrier Aviation.  The last thing the Navy needs is a maintenance whore that sucks up funds the way a New Orleans hooker sucks up tourists in a skanky back alley.