The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the most expensive military program in the world with a total cost of more than $1 trillion. Now, a new Pentagon report suggests that the futuristic fighter jet still has hundreds of deficiencies and won’t be ready for ready for full combat testing until 2019.
President-elect Donald Trump sent Lockheed Martin stocks plummeting on Monday morning after he published a hostile tweet about the huge cost of the F-35 Lightning II program.
After a stunning 15 years of development and countless delays, the US Air Force just declared the first squadron of F-35A fighter jets ready for combat. The 34th Fighter Squadron at Utah’s Hill Air Force Base can now go fight bad guys anywhere in the world.
Let me get this out of the way: the trillion dollar F-35 fighter jet program is an embarrassing mess. But it’s hard not to marvel at the very expensive technology’s promises. This conflict squeezed my brain this week, when the Air Force stopped by Gizmodo’s office with a $400,000 F-35 helmet in hand. They even let me…
Now, more than $1 trillion into its development, the F-35 aircraft is experiencing glitches with its radar systems. US Air Force major general Jeffrey Harrigian explained the problem in an IHS Jane report: “What would happen is they’d get a signal that says either a radar degrade or a radar fail—something that would…
We all know how badass the Harriers and F-35s of the world are but some of these other vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircrafts from history are totally wild. The Williams X-Jet was essentially a flying one-man podium barrel thing. The Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar was legitimately a man-made flying saucer. And so…
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the most expensive military program in the world, so it should be no surprise that the F-35 aircraft is loaded with powerful weapons controlled by powerful computers. Unfortunately, the guns don’t fire yet, and the computers still don’t work right.
Woo, boy. Here’s video showing Lockheed Martin conducting the first aerial test for the F-35’s gatling gun. Called the GAU-22/A, the weapon can pop off 3,300 25mm rounds per minute. The gun fires so fast that your eyes might miss it. Even though the test was successful, the GAU-22/A won’t be combat ready until 2019…
How do pilots learn how to fly a fighter jet that cost a trillion dollars to develop (or a $100 million a pop to make)? By hopping in a total bad ass simulator that mimics everything about the F-35 in basically the sickest video game ever. The pilots in the simulator look like they’re flying some space age ship, with…
While Britain waits (and waits, and waits) for the F-35 to stop breaking, the mainstay of its ground-attack aircraft remains the Panavia Tornado, a ‘70s airframe that is not aging gracefully. Exhibit A: the two Brimstone missiles that accidentally ‘became detached’ during a landing in Cyprus today.
Here’s the first time an F-35B has taken off from a ski jump. The little boost not only looks cool, like a stunt ramp, but helps the fighter jet take off with a more upward flight path. These type of ski ramps are actually installed on aircraft carriers so it’s important for the, um, troubled (cursed?) aircraft to…
Here’s the perfect angle of an F-35, you see it directly head on and ripping through the air and feel all the intimidation of this futuristic fighter jet. It looks like science fiction. It looks like it’s ready to go warring on other planets. It looks awesome.
I’ve seen tons of publicity shots of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning fighter, one of the most controversial US military aircraft ever, but this photo left me speechless.
Lt. Col. Christine Mau, 33rd Operations Group deputy commander, just completed a training flight as the US’s first female F-35 pilot. Here are photos of her in an F-35A, a fifth-generation single-seat fighter.
Pumping gas never looked so good. Here’s an awesome photo from Lockheed Martin showing four F-35s sipping fuel from a KC-130j tanker plane. It captures the entire view, from below and to the side to up front and up close. Seeing fighter jets refuel in the air will probably never get old to me, especially when it looks…
The F-35 Lightning II is a comically expensive fighter jet with a host of problems but one thing you can’t deny: it can sure look badass. Like badass in the being able to see a glimpse of the future today badass. Like badass as in this flying killer machine totally looks like it’s from a sci-fi movie badass. Like…
Regardless your thoughts on the F-35 program, or billion-dollar fighter jets in general, there’s still something inherently amazing about mid-air refuelling: two man-made machines, probably hundreds of miles from home, hooking up in mid-air and transferring aerial lifeblood from one to another.
This is one of the priciest pieces of pilots’ head gear ever constructed. The F-35 Gen III Helmet Mounted Display System (HMDS), with the tremendous price tag of $400,000, is so advanced that it lets pilots see through their own airframe.
Cool photo of Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II undergoing tests in extreme freezing weather conditions.
