Navy 6th Generation Fighter

2,3, 4, 5: All of those can be obtained by having a different view of what a fighter is. At some point, it may be determined that greater stealth, payload and range matter more than speed and maneuverability which could lead to "fighters" being flying wings.

From WWII onward, the US has used the motto that you never use manpower when you could use firepower. Lately, an equivalent motto has been that you don't send an aircraft when you could send a missile; The missile is much lower risk while being faster than an aircraft. If you extrapolate from that, it may be more useful to have an aircraft which isn't that maneuverable and only goes high subsonic if it allows you to have much higher range, loiter time, payload and stealth and instead rely on missiles/drones/probes when you want something fast and maneuverable.

Could well be, but at least currently fighter speed and maneuverability are very important in avoiding missiles. While they are very difficult to avoid when they have a lot of energy, their ability to catch fast and maneuverable targets pretty quickly goes down when the missile speed and energy go down. Of course missiles with ramjet or pulsed rocket motors are better at keeping the speed and energy higher for the terminal phase. But even then the thrust time for the motor is limited. But there might well be some point where speed and maneuverability become significantly less relevant than today. Missiles might get just too good and stealth, EW, DEWs or miniature self defence munitions are the only good answer.

Based on what? I've seen no evidence that they can't physically expand the array.
The sizing of the current radar is driven mainly by cost.

Based upon the physical dimensions of the nose. We're talking about an F-35, not a TARDIS. There simply isn't room to stuff an APG-77/82 sized aperture in the F-35s nose.

So then the Navy should cancel MQ-25 right?

I didn't say that tankers weren't useful, but using your argument, we could just build aircraft with legacy Hornet ranges, and lots and lots of tankers. That's not nearly as beneficial as having aircraft with an unrefueled combat radius of >1000nm, so that you need less tankers, less assets to protect tankers, and the tankers can remain at a safer distance from IADS. It also makes a carrier Air wing less reliant on exquisite long range munitions to make up range deficits.

Based upon the physical dimensions of the nose. We're talking about an F-35, not a TARDIS. There simply isn't room to stuff an APG-77/82 sized aperture in the F-35s nose.

Translation: you have no actual evidence. Nor any evidence that a F-35 derivative would be SWAP-C limited.

So then the Navy should cancel MQ-25 right?

I didn't say that tankers weren't useful, but using your argument, we could just build aircraft with legacy Hornet ranges, and lots and lots of tankers.

Spot factor counts for a lot. So does carrier air wing size. To a first order approximation, as the distance
to target increases the only realistic way to maintain the sortie rate is with more aircraft.

It also makes a carrier Air wing less reliant on exquisite long range munitions to make up range deficits.

The Navy was talking about abdicating the penetrating role to the Air Force. So it's going to be standoff of some type.

Translation: you have no actual evidence. Nor any evidence that a F-35 derivative would be SWAP-C limited.

It's called deductive reasoning (i.e. you can't put 10lbs of sh*t, in a 5lb sack.)

Spot factor counts for a lot. So does carrier air wing size. To a first order approximation, as the distance
to target increases the only realistic way to maintain the sortie rate is with more aircraft.

Well, if we're talking about replacing the Super Hornet fleet, then the Air wing size shouldn't change significantly. It will just gain longer range aircraft, allowing it to stay further away from DF-21/26, and cruise missiles, while being less reliant upon tankers.

The Navy was talking about abdicating the penetrating role to the Air Force. So it's going to be standoff of some type.

Big difference between use, and rely upon.

It's called deductive reasoning (i.e. you can't put 10lbs of sh*t, in a 5lb sack.)

Given that they've never published how much slack they have in terms of volume and weight
you'll surely concede that's just guesswork right?

Well, if we're talking about replacing the Super Hornet fleet, then the Air wing size shouldn't change significantly. It will just gain longer range aircraft, allowing it to stay further away from DF-21/26, and cruise missiles, while being less reliant upon tankers.

No growth in CVW size means a collapse in sortie generation rate due to the extended ranges to target
since transit times will dominate. The only way around that would be to regularly supercruise at Mach 2 out and back.
That's probably not happening.

Big difference between use, and rely upon.

If you can't penetrate and you need to service aimpoints with 1000 pound weapons the cheapest standoff
is some JASSM derivative. That's not cheap and leaving aside the fact that the majority of the Navy's carriers were built around munitions no larger than JSOW. So if you can get by with the < 500 lbs warhead in JSOW-ER that's still
$500k per aimpoint.

Might as well just use CLEAVER at that point.

For hypersonics, HAWC looks to be about the largest hypersonic that could be reasonably accommodated on a CVN
and maybe only the Ford class. If that's what you mean by exquisite.