U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis has ordered this of the armed services: get your fighter jets ready for action. Mattis has instructed the services he wants four out of five fighter jets ready for combat within one year—which is a far cry from current levels.
Twelve years after its first flight, a F-35 Joint Strike Fighter finally crashed last week. The aircraft, a Marine Corps F-35B variant, went down in South Carolina near a key F-35 base. The incident overshadowed another F-35 milestone that took place the same day, the first takeoffs and landing of the F-35 from the…
The F-35 Lightning II is one of the most complicated, controversial, and expensive defense projects in history. But it may finally be turning a corner. Like a container ship that takes miles to change direction, the F-35 program is gradually improving, and closing in on a final round of tests to determine the plane’s…
The F-35 Lightning II has gotten a lot of crap all over the world for being both finicky to actually put into combat, and also for having stealth that doesn’t really work all the time. To prove it can both fly in the air and do it over enemy territory without being spotted by radar, Israel just released this photo of…
Ben Cohen, the “Ben” part of Ben & Jerry’s, was arrested on Saturday after he and two other activists drove a truck through downtown Burlington, Vermont, blasting jet noises in protest of a plan to host 18 F-35s at Burlington International Airport. According to NBC5, they blasted the simulated jet noises 13 times…
Maybe the F-35 program is just not supposed to work out. Despite a week where the system appeared to display a growing sense of maturity, old problems of reliability, pilot hypoxia and lagging airframe deliveries eclipsed progress. But, first, the good news.
After distastefully joking to a crowd of Puerto Ricans devastated by Hurricane Maria that they were taking up too much of the budget, Trump later proudly announced in a military briefing that he would be rewarding the armed forces for their relief efforts on the island by ordering “hundreds of millions of dollars” in…
Availability of spare parts is getting worse. Repairs are delayed. Jets aren’t available when needed and pilots can’t get enough training hours. Surprise, everyone. The F-35 is still a spectacularly inefficient, super expensive shitshow that continues be the national leader in military procurement mismanagement.
On Friday, the U.S. Air Force cancelled all F-35A Lightning II training flights at Luke Air Force Base just outside Phoenix, Arizona after it was reported five pilots had been experiencing hypoxia-like symptoms since May 2. The one-day pause at the base was to further examine the cause and further educate F-35 pilots…
Despite having the highest accident rate of any U.S. Marine Corps fixed-wing aircraft, the Marines will keep the AV-8B Harrier around longer than planned. The reason is simple: Marine F/A-18 Hornets are in far worse shape and need to be replaced sooner. In 2014, the Marines were committed to retiring the Harrier…
Most aerial refueling videos are shot through the tiny little window that the booms use to steer a little fuel nozzle towards a thirsty aircraft. But the KC-130 is not just a flying gas station, it’s also a fully functional cargo plane. Which means you could throw down the ramp, and hang out the back.
There are fewer jets that are beaten up on more than the F-35, but we couldn’t help but share this little nugget from Australia: the nation’s Air Force grounded a pair of its F-35s last weekend, for fear of thunderstorms.
The F-35! It’s “not very good!” It’s “out of control!” It’s comes at a “tremendous cost!” It is also a “great plane” now, because President Donald Trump has fixed it.
President-elect Donald Trump is tweeting again, and once more he’s tweeting about the F-35 fighter jet. Last week, he said the F-35 program costs have gone “out of control,” and he was right, sort of. Except now his proposed solution appears to be a physically impossible fantasy plane. God help us.
President-elect Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets early this morning, as he is wont to do, this time with one of them aimed at the F-35 Lightning II program. Over the years the Joint Strike Fighter program has grown massively over-complicated and over-budget, but Trump hasn’t yet said what he wants to do about…
The A-10 Thunderbolt AKA “Warthog” is a flying farm tractor. Slow, brutish, but reliable as the tide and endearingly indestructible and incredibly effective. Strategists have feared that the jet will be axed in favor of funding the F-35, but the U.S. Air Force recently confirmed that it plans to keep the A-10 flying…
The “B” variant of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet is supposed to be able to take off close to vertically and hover. Getting it to work has been problematic since the jet blast is hot enough to melt the concrete it’d be parked on, but it sure does show up spectacularly to this heavy-duty thermal imaging camera.
The F-35 fighter jet can be fitted with a variety of armaments, including this GAU-22 four-barrel gun pod capable of rattling off 50 25mm rounds per second. The destructive bore is impressive, the sound is downright terrifying.
Today marks the rollout of the first Israeli F-35 and their publicity image is, uh, romantic.
