“An F-35 recently did 17 sorties in one day”
Wow.
Thats a lot of VERY short flights that basically did nothing, no mission.
And I wonder if that many flights is even possible at all.
Pre-flight, start, taxi, EOR checks, launch, quick circuit and land, de-arm, taxi back, shut-down, post-flight inspection. . .repeat. . .is it even possible 17 sorties (i.e., flights) were done in 24hrs.
“sorties”
Is it possible VTOLs (simply up and down) are being counted as “sorties”?
It’s not outside the realm of possibilities to perform 17 VTOLs in a day...
A sortie is quite a lot different than performing VTOLs...it’d be an interesting exercise in stretching the definition of a sortie if they actually counted them as such.
However, the “mission” may have been testing the STOVL system and landing gear...there’s not enough information there to indicate if it was test or operational.