Sean Stackley, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said that “Marines absolutely love this aircraft” as they prepare to field a new F-35 squadron in June.
Testifying before the House Armed Services Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee said the aircraft “was designed and built for the future, for high-end threat.”
According to USNI, Mr Stackley added it was really a “false choice” to consider upgrading legacy aircraft instead of replacing them with the fifth-generation fighter that will be used by the Navy and Air Force, as well as the Marines.
The US Marine Corps plans to purchase 340 F-35Bs, to replace current inventories of both the F/A-18 Hornet (A, B, C and D-models), and the AV-8B Harrier II, in the fighter and attack roles.
The Marines plan to use the F-35B from “unimproved surfaces at austere bases” but with “special, high-temperature concrete designed to handle the heat.”
The USMC declared Initial Operational Capability with about 50 F-35s running interim Block 2B software on 31 July 2015.
It can’t be true!! All the people with no expirancing in the project and vested interest in other planes say it’s rubush!
Nailed it!!!!
Bring back the Sopwith Camel !
The shadow defence sec will probably say we shouldn’t buy them because of future technology might mean planes can be shot from the sky.
Please leave politics off this page, cheers.
Politics is so closely linked to Defence that it can’t simply be ignored I’m afraid, much as I’d like to!
To be fair, I remember the Eurofighter Typhoon being poo-poohed before it even left the ground
To be fair General Melchett warned us to never ignore a poo poo.
“I hope so, Blackadder. You know, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being in the Army, it’s never ignore a poo-poo.
I knew a major, got poo-pooed made the mistake of ignoring the poo-poo.
He poo-pooed it.
Fatal error, because it turned out all along that the soldier who pooh-pooed him had been poo-pooing a lot of other officers who poo-pooed their poo-poos.
In the end, we had to disband the regiment, morale totally destroyed by poo-poo”
Yep the Typhoon was slated before it went into service. Now everyone realises what a fantastic platform it really is. More than a match for any aircraft anywhere. But the F35 will compliment the Typhoon.
But a bloke I was talking to down the pub said it didn’t work !
Did he also use the wrong caption for the wrong variant of Typhoon? 😛
I cannot belive that’s been on a RAF website since 2007 and wasn’t corrected!
To be fair, this guy is hardly unbiased. If he said anything other than these were amazing jets, he would be effectively saying his organisation (and considering his role, probably himself) made a mistake with the purchase, which they would never admit even if true.
Who knows which side of the argument is right, but this doesn’t get us any further to knowing.
But Pierre Spray says ……………………………
Ryan Kelly
You’re rubbing it in so much :'((
see the F-35 is good
NEVER
Accept it. We are getting a damn good aircraft lol
NOOOOOOO
All the Putin bots say its rubbish too! Russia Today also say its rubbish; in fact so many people who could potentially end up being on the wrong side of this aircraft say its rubbish with such conviction that it simply must be rubbish!
of course they do
F-35 was originally suppose to be a replacement for Harriers
but marines dragged the airforce and navy into this stupid program
now the navy and airforce are stuck with this underperforming aircraft
F-35 is a good enough replacement for harriers but is not capable enough to replace F-18, F-16 and A-10
Strange, because when you compare stats, the F35 is vastly superior to the Harrier (GR7). Compared to a F18D the F35:
has better range
Similar top speed
better take-off weight
And significantly better Avionics. If you cast your mind back to the TSR2, Tornado, Typhoon etc. there were a large proportion of people talking about what lemons they were.
The F35B will be a very good aircraft..I think in years to come some of you guys might be surprised, give it time.. I have seen several pilots saying it is a top-notch aircraft, these are guys that have flown the F35B during flight testing, would of thought they are the people to listen to.