Tag: F-35

The Air Force’s X-37B is a Boeing-built unmanned spacecraft that bears a striking resemblance to the old Space Shuttle (despite being significantly smaller). Although the program itself is shrouded in secrecy, its long-term orbital missions often make the headlines, thanks in no small part to the decidedly un-secret sonic booms the platform creates over Florida […]

The U.S. Marine Corps has recently been experimenting with using its America and Wasp class amphibious assault ships as smaller aircraft carriers that can launch sorties of short takeoff/vertical landing F-35Bs. Now, with the Navy struggling to keep its carrier fleet operational amid maintenance issues and the additional delays to the deployment of the USS […]

In recent months, Turkey announced plans to purchase Russia’s advanced S-400 air defense system, a decision that cost them their opportunity to purchase America’s premier fighter, the F-35. Since then, speculation has run rampant about what fighter platform Turkey will procure in its place, with initial rumors pointing toward Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57. These rumors were […]

The Air Force has agreed to purchase 478 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters from Lockheed Martin for an estimated $34 billion. This announcement represents a reduction in cost for the most advanced fighter on the planet and is sure to reignite debate about the proper makeup of America’s fighter forces. Last year, the U.S. Air […]

America has long relied on its fleet of Nimitz (and soon Ford) class super carriers to offer the nation’s defense apparatus its most potent form of force projection. With more than 60 aircraft and as many as 6,000 sailors on board, each carrier in the U.S. Navy’s stable is a force unto itself — but […]

In 1997, Lockheed Martin earned the distinction of being one of two final competitors for the Pentagon’s revolutionary new Joint Strike Fighter concept program. Within four years, they had beaten out the competition at Boeing and secured victory for their X-35 concept. Five years after that, in February of 2006, the first production F-35A rolled […]

At the end of World War II, the United States boasted around 300,000 combat aircraft. Today, America has only around 13,400. Of course, the U.S. still has more air power than any nation on the globe, but there’s something to be said for that loss of sheer volume when it comes to developing strategies for […]

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has promised that his country would cease its cooperation with the United States if no progress is made on the creation of a safe zone in Syria’s northeast. In a recent phone call with his American counterpart Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Akar reiterated the longstanding request made by Turkey that […]

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is widely considered to be the most advanced air combat platform ever to take to the skies, but with the increased capabilities allotted by new technologies comes an inherent drawback: the possibility that the technology can fail. That’s exactly the situation Captain Robert Larson, a student F-35 pilot assigned to […]

When it comes to American air dominance, no platform gets more attention than the high-cost and high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Of course, the F-35’s monopoly on the media’s attention makes a fair amount of sense: by most accounts, it’s the most technologically advanced and expensive aircraft ever to enter the fight, and thanks to […]

Over the past few days, headlines have popped up all around the world indicating that a German tech firm had managed to track a pair of American F-35s for nearly a hundred miles when they visited Berlin last year for an airshow. The company, called Hensold, used a new form of radar that reads and […]

From a journalistic perspective, covering the F-35 program can be a bit of a quagmire at times. The aircraft is undoubtedly among the most advanced and capable air platforms ever to take to the sky, but the plane’s development has also been a clinic in poor planning, over-spending, and the inherent flaws in putting an […]