Let this ac go to the deck. I have operated from Deck but in a VSTOL, we will see how many of these ac will go overboard and how many will land safely? Things look good on land based facilities but when ship is rolling and pitching, things can go out of hand. However I must also accept that USN has the largest exp of operating fighters from deck compared to anyother navy of the world.
I am all for the Navy picking the F-35C if a tender is released for many reasons.
For one, it is a fifth generation aircraft. Beats the Rafale there. Also, we don't know, as of today, to what extent the F-35s stealthiness will be compromised with new advances in radar. But anything that will pick up a F-35 from a reasonable distance would pick up the Rafale much more easily. The Israelis managed to convince the Americans in developing their own version since they believe the F-35As stealthiness will be eroded in the next 5 to 10 years and they will have to rely on their own EW equipment for survivability.
Technically the F-35 will have a bigger and better radar (800mm vs 650mm) and its EW equipment should be at par if not better than Rafale. All other equipment should be more or less at par. The F-35C has a much larger internal volume for avionics. But Rafale has a much higher growth potential as the engines are much easier to upgrade. But this depends on whether P&W hit some sort of a growth ceiling for the F-135 engine.
As for range and endurance, Rafale should beat the F-35C every time when carrying mission loads because Rafale always carries tanks. F-35C should beat the Rafale when it comes to internal fuel (8.8 tonnes vs 4.7 tonnes).
Rafale would obviously beat the F-35C when it comes to performance. The F-35C is G limited to 7.5 while Rafale does 9G with limiters and can go beyond too. In case the F-35s stealth is compromised, its only way out is performance, here the Rafale has the advantage. Purely based on technical merit, the Rafale is better only in this aspect, IMHO. However they say the F-35C will be the best in sustained turn compared to F-35A and B. According to a F-35A pilot, the F-35 turns better than the F-16 and much closer to the F-22, with subsonic acceleration almost at par with the F-22. Nevertheless, the G limits may cause issues for our Navy.
Lastly, training. The Indian Navy has operated the Sea Harrier and adding the F-35C to the inventory will help us get valuable training experience from the USMC and maybe even the Royal Navy who have operated such aircraft. So conversion pilots will find it very easy during training. The Navy may learn cheaper and easier alternatives when switching from a Sea Harrier infrastructure and logistics to the F-35C rather than Rafale due to the 10 years of experience the Marines would have had by then.
Of course there are both advantages and disadvantages when it comes to dealing with the Americans, mainly political advantages and industrial disadvantages. The threat of sanctions is obviously the biggest. With just 30 or 40 aircraft we may not be able to negotiate a decent ToT package either.
