What we have here is a failure to communicate.

Cool Hand Luke references be damned, Inside Defense (via the Pentagon’s F-35 Joint Program Office) is reporting that the fifth-generation aircraft – the F-35 B – is “too small to carry the required load of the new Small Diameter Bomb. Otherwise known as the SDB II, the precision-strike bomb was that was designed and originally scheduled to be ready when the fighter jet was, and loaded into the state-of-art flying machine’s inside weapons bay.

That’s not going to happen.

With the SB II, the jet is said to be able to target eight points from 40 miles away with total precision. The bombs even possess the ability to move with the targets should they move using infrared guidance systems.

Why is the jet’s smaller bay tinier than the other models? It’s for a very good reason: it’s one of the design modifications that allows for its incredible ability to take-off with little runway and even land vertically.

As for the bump to 2022 for full integration, this is how Inside Defense explains it:

The Navy initially wanted to field the SDB II first on the F-35B/C but is instead bringing forward integration with the F/A-18 Super Hornet. The SDB II is an F-35 Block 4 software capability and the release of that software load has been pushed back to FY-22.

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