[IronDuke99]

Looking at this from a British point of view (and UK has actually put a lot of money into F-35)

I see an aircraft that is vital to the new Royal Navy Aircraft Carriers, because those carriers, although second in size only to USN Carriers, do not have cats and traps.

I see an aircraft that is not dedicated to the RN Fleet Air Arm, as it should be, but instead will be under at least partly RAF control (and the RAF see F-35B as a Tornado replacement for some reason).

Cannot help thinking that my views back in the early 2000's (make both the new British Carriers cats and traps and buy Super Hornet but with the option to also buy Rafale, and, maybe, later down the track F-35C) would have been better than the position now.

UK making 70,000 ton Carriers STOVL only ever really made (some) sense if their had been a smooth transfer from Harrier to F-35, as was the original plan back in the 90's. FAA Sea Harrier has been gone for years now and so have all Harriers from British service, due to an RAF (who had been given control of the British 'joint' Harrier force) choice to scrap them.

So why build very large carriers and make them carry STOVL F-35B a aircraft that has less range, less internal weapons capacity (and you only keep the limited F-35 stealth capacity with internal weapons) and less agility than F-35C, will cost more per unit to buy and will inevitably require more maintenance (because it has an extra dirty great heavy 'lift' fan, that is entirely useless to the aircraft except in landing, or taking off vertically, which has no real use in actual ops).

HMS Queen Elizabeth (named after Elizabeth I of defeat of the Spanish Armada fame) Does sea trails next year, but is unlikely to have a single fixed wing jet aboard before 2020 and will not have even a very modest 24 F-35B air group much before 2023 (the plan is, in a major conflict this would rise to at least 36 fixed wing aircraft). Assuming that is the RAF cooperates...

The whole thing strikes me as a hugely expensive mess, that passed by while most attention was on fighting expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we did not bloody win in any case.