The US Marines are prioritising the non-jumpjet version of the F-35 stealth jet

Telegraph

14-02-2025

Without much fanfare, the US Marine Corps made a critical decision recently – one that should boost the ability of its fighter squadrons to wage a major air war in the western Pacific region.
With the stroke of a pen, the Corps significantly altered the mix of Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter variants it's acquiring. Instead of buying 353 vertical-landing F-35Bs and just 67 carrier-capable tailhook F-35Cs as previously planned, now the Marines will buy 280 F-35Bs and 140 F-35Cs: enough for 12 F-35B squadrons and eight F-35C squadrons, each with 12 jets.
The Corps announced the change in the latest edition of its annual aviation plan.
There are already around 180 F-35Bs and 50 F-35Cs in USMC service. More of the $100-million, supersonic planes arrive every year from Lockheed's Texas factory.
The F-35B was designed to operate from the US Navy's 800-foot amphibious assault ships which don't have catapults or arrester wires and so require jump-jet capability; the F-35C was always meant to fly from the fleet's 1,000-foot aircraft carriers. The F-35C, also in service with the US Navy, boasts a bigger wing, more fuel capacity and more capacious weapons bays than the F-35B, which must accommodate a downward-blasting engine driven fan and other heavy, bulky equipment that lends it its vertical landing capability. The F-35C is also cheaper to buy and to operate, being less complex.
The Marine Corps embarks fighter detachments, or even whole squadrons, aboard both ship types – and also deploys both the F-35B and F-35C for operations from austere bases on land.
Early on, the Marines planned to equip just a few squadrons with F-35Cs in order to honor a longstanding agreement with the Navy to integrate Marine jets with Navy carrier air wings for occasional front-line carrier cruises. The F-35B, not the F-35C, was going to define Marine air power through the 2020s and beyond.
But the changing balance of power in the western Pacific clearly changed the Marines' thinking. After a generation of breakneck modernization, the Chinese air force and navy now match – if not exceed – the US Air Force and US maritime services in key metrics. The Chinese have more warships and more twin-engine stealth fighters.
In the event of war with China, the Marines expect a hard fight for control of the air over the Taiwan Strait and the 'first island chain' stretching from Japan to The Philippines. What one Marine squadron leader described as the 'time-distance-fuel problem' complicates US planning.
There are precious few US bases within unrefuelled fighter range of the likeliest battlefields around Taiwan. The main one, Kadena air base in Okinawa – 470 miles from Taiwan – is expected to come under heavy bombardment by Chinese missiles in the opening hours of a war in the region.
To avoid concentrating their warplanes at one vulnerable base, the Pentagon plans to disperse the planes across a network of austere island airstrips. But few would be closer to the action than Kadena. An F-35B ranges just 500 miles with bombs and missiles in its internal bays. An F-35C ranges farther: perhaps as far as 600 miles.
The F-35C's extra range helps mitigate the time-distance-fuel problem – and may partially explain the Marines' growing fondness for the type.
But the greater volume of the F-35C's weapons bays might be even more attractive to the Corps than the extra range. The F-35 is stealthiest when it carries all its munitions internally. In its stealthiest mode, the F-35B carries just four AIM-120 medium-range air-to-air missiles. The F-35C can, with a few planned tweaks, pack six AIM-120s internally.
The F-35C can fit the new AGM-88G anti-radar missile in its bays; the F-35B can't.
In shifting to the F-35C, the Marine Corps is signalling its concern over the growing sophistication of Chinese forces in the western Pacific – and also its intention to meet those Chinese forces with its best planes flying from the most secure bases with the best weapons carried in the stealthiest mode.
The Marines are, in other words, taking no chances.