F-22

The United States Department of Defense and at least two other nations have formally stopped accepting deliveries of Lockheed Martin’s flagship F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The hiatus is reportedly the result of continued negotiations regarding who would pay for significant repairs required for hundreds of airframes that have already been delivered. Although there are a […]

Knowing your opponent is one of the key differences between competitive fighting and the good old fashioned sort you may find behind your local bar. Fighters size one another up, establish strategies based on strengths and weaknesses, and approach their fight with a tailor made game plan specifically designed to pick one enemy apart – […]

There is no debate that America’s fifth generation fighters, the F-22 and F-35, tend to garner the most publicity, but in terms of operational aircraft, all of the functional Raptors and Joint Strike Fighters employed by the entire U.S. military wouldn’t even add up to a sizeable chunk of the number of F/A-18 Hornets and […]

An Air Force F-22 prepares to receive fuel from a KC-10 Extender over Syria, March 2, 2018. The F-22 is assigned to the 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, Al Dhafra Air Base, United Arab Emirates. The aircraft possesses a sophisticated sensor suite allowing the pilot to track, identify, shoot and kill air-to-air threats before being detected. […]

Just under half of the $100 million a piece F-35 Joint Strike Fighters delivered by Lockheed Martin thus far are non-operational, according to statements made by Vice Adm. Mat Winter, head of the Defense Department’s F-35 Joint Program Office. The F-35 program, which has received significant political support thanks to development and manufacturing operations tied […]

Last week, images surfaced on social media that seemed to show two advanced Russian Su-57s, also known as T-50s, had been deployed to Syria, where Russian forces have been providing military support to Bashar Al Assad’s regime. Now, satellite imagery has confirmed not only the presence of the supposed 5th generation fighters, but have increased […]

New footage to surface on social media late Wednesday night appears to show Russia’s most advanced fighter platform, the Su-57, arriving in Syria for combat operations. The Su-57, also known as the PAK FA and T-50, is Russia’s most advanced fighter platform, widely believed to be a 5th generation competitor for the likes of America’s […]

When people think in terms of open war between nation-level opponents, they tend to consider things like the destructive capability of weapons technologies and the size or number of massive war fighting platforms, but when it comes to a potential conflict with a nation like China, the winner might be decided by something far simpler: […]

An Army Golden Knights parachute team member descends in the distance as an Air Force F-22 Raptor sits parked at Coast Guard Air Station Miami in Opa-locka, Fla., May 26, 2017, during the National Salute to America’s Heroes Air and Sea Show. Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard service members participated in […]

On Saturday, Israel suffered its first loss of a fighter jet in contested airspace in 36 years, when an F-16I was shot down over Syria while conducting combat operations against Iranian assets within the region. The inciting incident, a violation of Israeli airspace by an Iranian drone, ended with Israeli forces downing the drone and […]

Last week, as the Chengdu J-20 entered into service, China became the second nation on the planet to field a fifth generation fighter platform… or at least that’s what they’ve claimed. New reports in Chinese media, however, indicate that issues with the advanced fighter’s intended power plant, combined with the Chinese government’s hurry to get […]

Within the defense aerospace industry, it’s not uncommon to hear terms bandied about like “fifth generation fighter” when describing America’s two crown jewel air platforms: the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 Raptor. That “fifth generation” moniker is a standard naming convention allotted to the world’s next generation platforms, and while there has been […]