Thing is you can make a good carrier fighter into a good landbased fighter. Not the other way roud.
Look at the F-111.
Look at the F-14, pure carrier fighter but great off land and could take on an F-15 no probs. Imagine if they took and F-15 and started beefing it up for carrier ops.
I'd take a C version of the F-35 any day. Also you'd save money in spares. These things are crazy, you have 3 different types of the same plane but they might only have 50 - 60% commonality in spares. Ok that might eb an exaggeration but look at the Tornado F.3 and GR-4, same plane, different radar but commonality ZIP.
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