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Ane of the limits of stealth aircraft, including the F-35, is that they have to bear their armaments in internal trophy if they desire to remain in full stealth mode. While it's possible to mount external hardware on the aircraft, doing and so hurts its stealth profile. The problem with the internal bays is that they don't concord much in the way of ordnance. The F-22 carries vi across-visual-range missiles, while the F-35 can currently agree just 4.

The Air Force has a proposed solution to this problem — then-chosen "arsenal" planes, which would be remotely guided past fighter shipping. As the name implies, an armory plane is a bomber or cargo plane that'due south been retrofitted to carry a diversity of mission-specific missiles and precision-guided ordnance. Information technology'due south an idea that the Air Force is borrowing from the Navy, which converted 4 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines (called "Boomers") into multi-role vessels that also comport 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles. Twenty-ii of the 24 Trident missile tubes were converted to hold seven Tomahawks each, while the remaining two tubes were outfitted for utilise by Special Forces.

Ohio-Class

An Ohio-class "boomer" converted into an SSGN — nuclear-powered guided missile submarine.

An arsenal plane would fill a like office. In this scenario, the fighter jet is a scout that relays precision targeting data back to the arsenal plane. The arsenal aeroplane then fires its own precision-guided ordnance at the target.

Parts of this system are already in identify, thanks to precision targeting upgrades to bombers similar the B-1B and B-52. But the Air Force is taking the concept farther, envisioning a network of datalinks between fighter shipping, surveillance craft, arsenal planes, bombers, and shut air support planes like the A-10. The result would be a comprehensively networked fighting force with armory planes fed information on most every aspect of the battlefield in existent time.

At that place are multiple potential advantages to the arsenal aeroplane concept. Stealth aircraft could still serve as potent scouts, even when they'd exhausted their weapons, and the project would retrofit existing craft rather than building new vehicles from scratch. The current proposal doesn't specify which aircraft would exist tapped for this duty; Foxtrot Blastoff speculates that the B-1B is more than likely than the B-52, since the latter has a specific nuclear mission, and that we might see lower-stop armory craft built from C-130 send planes also.

Whether the Air Force will go on to pursue the project long-term is still unknown. In that location are ongoing projects to develop smaller munitions that fit into the F-35'southward weapon bays more finer and external weapon pods with stealth characteristics. Modestly expanding the firepower of the F-22 or F-35 isn't as revolutionary every bit deploying precision-guided flight missile turrets, but information technology might exist simpler and easier to deploy in the long run.