F-35 A/B/C Community Mod

[Sierra99]

On 2/29/2024 at 10:26 AM, SkateZilla said:

The only aircraft left that it was meant to replace is the F-16, it was designed to be a connected battlefield aircraft along side the F-15EX (and originally block III SH, but the navy has already decided to move to a pure F-35C Fleet in a few decades). The F-16s is like the Honda Civic of the export Fighter Aircraft market, there are endless variants and addon options .
 

Skate the only comment I disagree with is this one...

The aircraft the F-35B was meant to replace was the AV-8B. The Marines needed a more capable V/STOL aircraft to replace the Harrier but the costs associated with such a small projected production run of F-35B was fiscally prohibitive. The only way to get the F-35B for the Marines was to spread out over all three services. F-35As and F-35Cs exist to bring the per unit cost down to a reasonable level. 

A friend who worked on the Boeing JSF program said there were many internal conversations about "What would happen" and "How much it would cost" to produce a Marine only version of the F-32 vs all three versions. The common understanding was "it's to expensive to do it that way."

 

[popov]

is there an updated link somewhere for their discord or download link if this is still available ?
thanks

[Weed89]

all these people that can fly the f35 in DCS...BUT not 1 SINGLE person can put a LINK to where and get a WORKING MOD  f35 for DCS.  WHY?????

[HawaiianRyan]

52 minutes ago, Weed89 said:

all these people that can fly the f35 in DCS...BUT not 1 SINGLE person can put a LINK to where and get a WORKING MOD  f35 for DCS.  WHY?????

Demanding, entitled attitudes maybe?

[minar]

I think its the dumbest idea yet for the USAF to try to replace the A10 with an F35. They tried this years ago by trying to sack it for an F16 and failed. First of all it can hardly carry anything. Stealth is not needed for TAC air. The guys on the ground want an airframe that can carry a ton of stuff and loiter for hours, the F35 also cannot withstand aa hits either, it also does not have an awesome and devastating cannon. The USAF needs to get its head out of its butt and stop being spoiled brats and thinking that everything has to be high tech and expensive. Its simply not realistic at all. Its ironic because they just chose an overrated crop duster for coin missions. They should just give their a10's to the Army and let them fly them like they want. That or build some updated new ones. The F35 is ridiculous for this type of mission. Its good to see that yet again, they A10 will not die and continue to serve for several more years yet.

 

That said this is a great mod.

Edited April 19 by minar

[SkateZilla]

On 4/18/2025 at 11:45 PM, minar said:

I think its the dumbest idea yet for the USAF to try to replace the A10 with an F35. They tried this years ago by trying to sack it for an F16 and failed. First of all it can hardly carry anything. Stealth is not needed for TAC air. The guys on the ground want an airframe that can carry a ton of stuff and loiter for hours, the F35 also cannot withstand aa hits either, it also does not have an awesome and devastating cannon. The USAF needs to get its head out of its butt and stop being spoiled brats and thinking that everything has to be high tech and expensive. Its simply not realistic at all. Its ironic because they just chose an overrated crop duster for coin missions. They should just give their a10's to the Army and let them fly them like they want. That or build some updated new ones. The F35 is ridiculous for this type of mission. Its good to see that yet again, they A10 will not die and continue to serve for several more years yet.

 

That said this is a great mod.

Problem is, the A-10s are all Old, despite getting new wings, which were already made and sitting in a warehouse when FC shut down operations, the main fuselage still endures stress from the GAU/8.

FC is gone, so is the tooling to build more, the only reason the A-10 is still in service, is because A. there is nothing close to doing that specific job on the same level. B. It would cost more to retire it than to operate it, C. Changes in congress at key times caused indecisions in the USAF Budget.

So I can emphasize each point a little bit:
A. It's obvious, there is no other platform with a GAU/8, they tried to mount one on a F-16, it didn't work out that well. The F-35A, being it's replacement, only because it's multi-role. But the Battlefield in the east, is not the type of battlefield where you can sit at 25K and lob LBGs and GPS Munitions all day, sometimes you gotta get down low and dirty, and I do not see the USAF sending a costly aircraft that has next to no AA Protection down low w/ only 180 rounds of GAU/22, it's like shooting NERK darts at a speeding car, not gonna do very much against armour. But the Airforce is consolidating, they don't want one aircraft specializing in one role, they want one aircraft that's OK at many, good at a few, to replace multiple, the Navy did the same thing, at one point it was the United States Department of Super Hornets, F-14s, A-7s, A-6s, S-3s, all gone off the deck, replaced by the F/A-18E/F/Gs. Shoot, if they could strap a trailer to the plane, it'd be replacing their COD as well.

B. Retiring the A-10, Sending it to mothballs, training and re-assignment of personnel and delegating Airwing roles to another aircraft to train on, would cost more than simple keeping the A-10s in service in a reduced flight hour status.

C. Every time the A-10 retirement is on the docket to be voted on, leadership and priorities change, and it gets dropped off the agenda.

Make no mistake, the days are numbered, as each older airframe even w/ the new wings approaches the flight hour limits, they are being retired one after another, and w/ the fleet getting smaller, the remaining airframes are getting exponentially higher flight time, so their journey to their service life limit is hastened w/ every airframe they retire.

Edited April 20 by SkateZilla

[BlackFalco]

Hi, is this mod still alive?

I joined Discord but its all empty.

[TheBiggerBass]

Am 20.4.2025 um 23:45 schrieb SkateZilla:

Problem is, the A-10s are all Old, despite getting new wings, which were already made and sitting in a warehouse when FC shut down operations, the main fuselage still endures stress from the GAU/8.

FC is gone, so is the tooling to build more, the only reason the A-10 is still in service, is because A. there is nothing close to doing that specific job on the same level. B. It would cost more to retire it than to operate it, C. Changes in congress at key times caused indecisions in the USAF Budget.

So I can emphasize each point a little bit:
A. It's obvious, there is no other platform with a GAU/8, they tried to mount one on a F-16, it didn't work out that well. The F-35A, being it's replacement, only because it's multi-role. But the Battlefield in the east, is not the type of battlefield where you can sit at 25K and lob LBGs and GPS Munitions all day, sometimes you gotta get down low and dirty, and I do not see the USAF sending a costly aircraft that has next to no AA Protection down low w/ only 180 rounds of GAU/22, it's like shooting NERK darts at a speeding car, not gonna do very much against armour. But the Airforce is consolidating, they don't want one aircraft specializing in one role, they want one aircraft that's OK at many, good at a few, to replace multiple, the Navy did the same thing, at one point it was the United States Department of Super Hornets, F-14s, A-7s, A-6s, S-3s, all gone off the deck, replaced by the F/A-18E/F/Gs. Shoot, if they could strap a trailer to the plane, it'd be replacing their COD as well.

B. Retiring the A-10, Sending it to mothballs, training and re-assignment of personnel and delegating Airwing roles to another aircraft to train on, would cost more than simple keeping the A-10s in service in a reduced flight hour status.

C. Every time the A-10 retirement is on the docket to be voted on, leadership and priorities change, and it gets dropped off the agenda.

Make no mistake, the days are numbered, as each older airframe even w/ the new wings approaches the flight hour limits, they are being retired one after another, and w/ the fleet getting smaller, the remaining airframes are getting exponentially higher flight time, so their journey to their service life limit is hastened w/ every airframe they retire.

Good points.

I love flying DCS. But as we see IRL in near east or Ukraine etc. I guess the future of airforce IRL will be huge numbers of low cost unmanned fighter drones anyway. It allows missions where you cannot send human pilots anymore and use much higher numbers of drones.

[SkateZilla]

7 hours ago, TheBiggerBass said:

Good points.

I love flying DCS. But as we see IRL in near east or Ukraine etc. I guess the future of airforce IRL will be huge numbers of low cost unmanned fighter drones anyway. It allows missions where you cannot send human pilots anymore and use much higher numbers of drones.

Still have to train the human drone pilots.

[TheBiggerBass]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb SkateZilla:

Still have to train the human drone pilots.

DCS might not be the worst preparation for this ...

[SkateZilla]

9 hours ago, TheBiggerBass said:

DCS might not be the worst preparation for this ...

There's already a Drone Station platform trainer made by ED for the Pro market.