Aboard the USS Wasp: Participants in Operational Testing Provide a Progress Report
02 Jun 2015 Robbin Laird

"...Question: What about flying the aircraft on and off the ship? How did that go?
Captain Andrew Smith: The aircraft itself flies fantastically. It’s an incredibly smooth flying airplane that is much easier to fly from a pilot perspective than the Harrier was, especially around the ship and the ship environment.

The training we did for this detachment was much less than the training we did in a Harrier fleet to get to a ship. And that’s just a testament to the ease of the airplane to fly, the pilot vehicle interface, as well as the simulators that we have on shore that allow us to recreate to a high degree of detail the ship environment.

We took pilots from across the spectrum. From East Coast, West Coast, Harrier, Hornet, two-seat, single seat, ship experience, no ship experience since flight school and we put them on this deck very easily in a very short amount of time with a short amount of adapting to the ship environment.

And you saw the results today.

It is a testament to the ease of the airplane, to its design specifications to how they execute those design specifications, and how easy it is for us to just adapt to flying the airplane.

The ship boarding rate is as high if not higher than the Harrier right now. I don’t enough data points to give you an exact number, but I can tell you from experience over a large number of landings in the Harrier and observing in the tower that this airplane is going to have a fantastically high boarding rate.

Question: What is a boarding rate?
Captain Andrew Smith: That’s the ability of the airplane to get aboard the ship without having to divert ashore. It’s something we’re very concerned with because we’re always trying to maintain the ability to divert in case of a problem. Well, we haven’t had any problems.

Question: What is the difference between flying the Harrier and the F-35B with regard to operating on this ship?
Captain Andrew Smith: The takeoff and landing portion of the F35 is seamless with the ship. It is much easier to execute from the pilot perspective as well as the single officer perspective up in the tower.

We were able to, in a very short period of time, smooth out all of our process with the ship, have a team of three organizations come together, fly together for the first time, set up standard operating procedures (SOP) and function around the ship in a seamless manner.

And most of that is due to the fact that the jet takes care of a lot of the task loading that was resident in the Harrier and is not resident in this airplane. So now we are able to pay attention to flying around the ship, and being a good steward of the aircraft and the ship at the same time, and bringing aboard exactly on time, exactly on the fuel safe [state] that I’m looking to be aboard by.

Question: What blocks of software on the six airplanes?
Captain Andrew Smith: There are four block 2B aircraft and two block 3I aircraft...."

...Question: How would compare landing on this ship versus a large deck traditional Navy carrier?
Major Brendan Walsh: The first major thing that I noticed was that the deck is straight line all the way in. In many ways that takes a lot of the variables out of the landing pattern that you even have to do in daytime.


Source: http://www.sldinfo.com/aboard-the-uss-w ... ss-report/

Regarding the EMP missile - remember that naval systems are already hardened against far higher power levels than a missile-based antenna looks likely to be able to produce. 

 

Really it comes down to two things, antenna size (which facilitates beamforming resolution) and onboard power generation, I can't imagine any system able to fit within a cruise missile generating more than a few KW of power or to put it another way, probably substaintially less than a fighter aircraft - remember the tests were against unshielded consumer electronics which aren't any real comparison to hardened military systems deployed at sea that have to be able to withstand the EMP effects from nuclear weapons etc. I'm pretty sure that most AESA arrays are quite powerful enough to fry unshielded electronics at considerable range, whether they are optimized to do this is another matter but some of the newer systems are said to be capable of tactically useful effects against military targets but then, again, they do have the advantage of incredibly powerful onboard powerplants.

 

In other words I don't think this system is a magic bullet in the same way and for the same reasons that most laser-weapons have failed which largely relates to power generation and the ease at which countermeasures and/or atmospheric conditions can render them ineffective.  

Ok Naval systems are, not the prime target.

 

What about IADS, and RED force underground bunkers, and facilities, that due to corruption and graft MIGHT not always follow proper hardening, and procedures. Why use Multiple sorties to drill a hole in lets lets Hainan island bunkers, when you can POSSIbly use these babies to shut down the IADS, The controll doors on the bunkers, the infrastructre and the whole 9 yards. This forces red forces to spend substantial money hardening alot of stuff.

Why escalate to tac Nukes, when you have EMP missiles, and Rocket assisted High speed Mountain penetrating weapons:?

Mines can be cleared, as well as underground channels. A ground penetrating H-bomb makes sure.nothing in that base survives, and we don't want anything in it to survive when we start attacking CHINESE TERRITORY that critical to them.

 

How would Americans react to an attack on King's Bay? Any kind of attack would be properly seen as an attempt to pull our nuclear teeth and we would respond most negatively..We should presume the Chinese would react the same way.     

What about IADS, and RED force underground bunkers, and facilities, that due to corruption and graft MIGHT not always follow proper hardening, and procedures. Why use Multiple sorties to drill a hole in lets lets Hainan island bunkers, when you can POSSIbly use these babies to shut down the IADS, The controll doors on the bunkers, the infrastructre and the whole 9 yards. This forces red forces to spend substantial money hardening alot of stuff.

 

 Because you are vastly overestimating both the likely power-level of the weapon effect itself  AND its area coverage capability AND its likelihood of being shot down OR triggering a full scale response etc. A battery-powered EMP weapon is not going to be a silver bullet..