Tag: Lockheed Martin

Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan is the longest-serving acting Pentagon head in American history, though he may have just cleared the final hurdle necessary to pursue an official appointment. An Inspector General (IG) investigation into the possibility Shanahan demonstrated favoritism toward his former employer while conducting official Pentagon duties has now cleared the former Boeing […]

The search continues for a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-35A that went down off the coast of Honshu in northeast Japan last Tuesday. The pilot, Maj. Akinori Hosomi, remains missing. Days after the Joint Strike fighter went missing on Japanese radar, bits of wreckage were found in the Pacific, confirming reports the aircraft crashed, but […]

For the first time, the U.S. Air Force is deploying the world’s most advanced fighter to the Middle East to participate in combat operations. While Marine Corps F-35Bs have already participated in combat operations over Afghanistan, this deployment marks the first outing for the Air Force’s F-35A iteration of the platform. The first F-35As reached […]

Search and rescue teams located portions of the wreckage belonging to the downed Japanese Air Self Defense Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that went missing Tuesday evening. The search for the pilot is ongoing. At approximately 7:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, a Japanese F-35A disappeared from the military’s tracking systems somewhere off the coast […]

Russia has a long and storied history of fielding capable fighter platforms that evoke anxiety in American pilots and interest from Chinese officials. A number of Chinese fighters in operations today are either production lines purchased directly from the Russian government or, as is the case with their carrier-based J-15s, were reverse engineered from Russian […]

Even among fans of Boeing’s F-15EX initiative, you won’t find anyone who will contend that the F-15 is a superior aircraft to Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter. On paper, a new F-15 does offer a number of advantages over the stealth F-35—higher top speed, lower operating costs, larger payload capacity, and greater operational range—but in […]

Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive with no other government experience, is now the nation’s longest-serving acting secretary of defense in history, having taken on the role after James Mattis resigned in December. Some believed that Shanahan’s “acting” prefix would soon give way to a formal appointment to the job, but that effort has been delayed […]

Last month, the United States Navy declared that the carrier-based variant of Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter, known as the F-35C, was ready to commence combat operations. Now, a new report from the non-profit, bipartisan Project on Government Oversight (POGO) says that decision contradicts the Navy’s own data regarding the platform. According to POGO, “The […]

As defense officials unveil their 2020 budget requests, journalists and analysts alike are finally getting a peek behind the curtain at the real priorities driving the American war-fighting apparatus. The Department of Defense (DOD), by and large, needs to err on the side of discretion when discussing ongoing defense initiatives. A poorly chosen word can […]

It can be tough to find stories about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that don’t go out of their way to paint the platform as either an incredibly overpriced boondoggle or the best thing to happen to military air power since the invention of nose-mounted radar. From an editorial standpoint, these “absolute good” and “absolute […]

Unlike the F-35, the F-22 has been operational for years, and has already been used in a number of intercepts of foreign aircraft over international waters.  It also trumps the F-35 in performance tests like maximum speed, rate of climb, and maneuverability, delivering figures that largely match or exceed that of the global competition. Like […]

In Europe, United States forces bolster a number of Brigade Combat Teams with the sole purpose of defending against the possibility of a Russian invasion. An important element of that defensive posture is the ability to deliver a great deal of air power throughout the region when needed, and as time goes on, the United […]