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Summary and Key Points: The nearly $9 billion cost increase for Canada’s F-35 acquisition, bringing the total to $27.7 billion, is not the real scandal; it is a symptom of a deeper “strategy shock.” According to a recent Auditor-General’s report, this “sticker shock” is less concerning than the fact that Canada lacks a coherent plan to support the jets. Key basing infrastructure for the F-35s will not be ready until 2029, years after the first jets arrive in 2026, and the Royal Canadian Air Force already faces a severe pilot shortage, raising serious questions about the nation’s ability to operate...

Over the years, Israel has requested the chance to become the F-22 Raptor’s sole foreign operator. While the F-35 Lightning II fighter is often considered to be the best of its kind in service today, another American-made fifth-generation jet, the F-22 Raptor, may have surpassed it. The older F-22 Raptor features all the latest and greatest features. The platform’s unmatched stealth, impressive speed, and sophisticated avionics and sensors makes the F-22 arguably the most coveted fighter series across the globe. Israel is perhaps the Raptor’s biggest fan. Surrounded by hostile adversaries and currently embroiled in a multi-front war against Iran,...

WASHINGTON — In keeping with his penchant for shocking the defense industry, President Donald Trump today seemingly revealed plans to develop a twin-engine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter known as the F-55, as well as an upgraded “F-22 Super.”But former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said he was “mystified by Trump’s comments,” and analysts said that what the president described would be a highly challenging engineering endeavor on par with creating a clean-sheet aircraft. They also questioned the wisdom of spending scarce budget dollars on a twin-engine advanced F-35 when the newly announced F-47 is already planned to...

The Royal Navy's flagship HMS Prince of Wales has departed on one of its biggest deployments yet. The £3bn aircraft carrier set off from Portsmouth and will take part in exercises demonstrating the UK's ability to operate fast jets at sea, and carry out large scale military operations on the other side of the world. Up to 24 of the latest F-35B stealth jets will join the carrier as it leads a multi-national fleet of warships to 40 countries across the Mediterranean, Middle East, south-east Asia, Japan and Australia. The 65,000-tonne warship, which can hold up to 1,600 military personnel,...

A dark mass of clouds hung low over North Charleston as Marine Col. Charles "Tre" Del Pizzo began his descent. It was a Sunday afternoon, late September 2023. Del Pizzo's hands were on the control stick and throttle of an F-35B Lightning II, the U.S. military’s most advanced stealth fighter, a $136 million supercomputer with wings. The F-35B can hover like a helicopter, and Del Pizzo planned to use that technology to land. Del Pizzo had just finished a training sortie over the Atlantic with a second F-35B pilot, practicing tactics at upwards of 500 mph at seven times the...

WASHINGTON — Boeing has won an Air Force contract to develop the first ever sixth-generation fighter, dubbed the F-47, which is seen as critical to maintaining America’s air supremacy over China, President Donald Trump announced today.The aerospace giant’s victory in the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program is a game-changer for Boeing, whose defense business has suffered billions of dollars in losses in recent years stemming from a series of ill-performing fixed-price contracts. In particular, the win gives Boeing the opportunity to build a new fighter jet at a time when its F/A-18 line is nearing closure, a...

* Canada is reviewing its contract with Lockheed Martin for F-35 fighter jets, the country's Defense Minister said. * The review comes amid rising tensions between Ottawa and Washington. * It comes after Portugal said it was also reconsidering purchasing the jet. Canada is reviewing its contract with US defense manufacturer Lockheed Martin to purchase F-35 fighter jets, its defense minister said on Friday. Speaking to CBC, Bill Blair said he had spoken with newly appointed Prime Minister Mark Carney and that they were now looking at "other alternatives" to the F-35. "It was the fighter jet identified by our...

Portugal won't buy Lockheed Martin F-35s from the United States though the country's air force gave a go-ahead for that. The country now wants to take into account other situational aspects and President Donald Trump is one of them. Citing Portuguese media Publico, Politico reported that outgoing defence minister Nuno Melo shot down the proposal of buying F-35s from the US because of Donald Trump. “We cannot ignore the geopolitical environment in our choices. The recent position of the United States, in the context of NATO ... must make us think about the best options, because the predictability of our...

Canada has ordered 88 F-35A fighters for $14.5 billion, and now they are really discussing whether the Pentagon can press a special button and turn all those aircraft into scrap metal if necessary The fear of being left unarmed and defenseless against armed aggression is exactly what the Trumpists have sown among their allies with their latest actions. Canadians, who have repeatedly heard threats from Donald Trump about the "51st U.S. state" and face the tariff war unleashed by Washington, have become anxious about their security. So, Canadian expert circles have expressed concerns about the ongoing acquisition of American F-35...

Germany may refuse to purchase American F-35 fighter jets. This is reported by the German tabloid Bild. According to the publication, the reason for Berlin's decision is the presence of a so-called emergency switch in the aircraft's electronic equipment. German officials fear that the United States may at some point deactivate and turn off the exported aircraft anywhere in the world. If we have to worry that the US might do with future German F-35s what it is currently doing with Ukraine, we might consider terminating the treaty. – said Wolfgang Ischinger, former head of the Munich Security Conference, in...

Lockheed-Martin's F-35 Lightning II stealth multirole fighter is one of those development boondoggles that we've become all too familiar with, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Elon Musk's DOGE boys are looking at perhaps canceling it. The Spectator's Teresa Mull wrote Wednesday that while in Hegseth’s view,“'efficiency' does not equate to funding cuts (he wants DoD spending to increase), one quick and easy way to curb waste right out the gate would be to abandon the F-35 fighter jet, fire every senior person involved in its commission and put in place systems to ensure that such horrors never happen again."Seriously,...

President Trump is about to unleash DOGE on the only government agency that has never passed an audit: the Pentagon. With an annual budget rapidly approaching a trillion dollars per year, no other pot of discretionary spending comes close. Moreover, the Pentagon recently failed its 7th consecutive audit, underscoring an ongoing breakdown in financial accountability that would never be tolerated at a publicly traded company. An agency receiving nearly a trillion taxpayer dollars to defend our nation should be held to at least the same standard. Imposing some fiscal discipline through targeted cuts is a good place to start. Big-ticket...

President Trump said after meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday that India will increase its purchases of American oil and military hardware, culminating in India’s purchase of the advanced F-35 fighter jet. “We’ll be increasing military sales to India by many billions of dollars. We’re also paving the way to ultimately provide India with the F-35 stealth fighters,” Trump said at a joint press conference with Modi. Trump also said the U.S. will become “a leading supplier of oil and gas to India” under a new agreement that will help reduce America’s trade deficit with India. The...

Elon Musk @elonmusk The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people. This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed. The US Air Force Secretary admitted in April 2024 that fewer than a third of F-35s built by Lockheed Martin are actually operational. Ex-US Congressman Matt Gaetz labels the F-35 as a "$100M paperweight", pointing...

All three variants of the relatively new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter have failed to hit readiness targets entirely. That’s according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a watchdog agency reporting on federal programs. GAO, which assessed all the nation’s tactical aircraft, found that no fighter planes are doing particularly well at meeting annual mission-capable goals – no Navy or Marine Corps platforms hit that target in the last six years – but the report’s data particularly underscores challenges faced by the F-35, despite maintenance and sustainment costs climbing at an unmatched rate. The report, which covers...

The United States Air Force (USAF) has confirmed it will pull out of three UK airbases. US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said the Americans will leave RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire. The move is part of a programme to save £320m ($500m) a year across Europe. The USAF lease the RAF bases. Mr Hagel said he understood it would mean job losses and thanked those who had supported the US Air Force. "I know that this will result in a reduction of our local host nations workforces at some locations; I value the...

Elon Musk again fired insults at the Pentagon’s F-35 program as he prepares to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency and advise the White House on how to slash federal spending. The billionaire backer of Donald Trump’s election campaign slammed the “idiots” who continue to build manned fighter jets like the F-35 in a Sunday post on X, adding a trash can emoji. In a separate post on Monday Musk, who is CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, doubled down. “The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things...

The Pentagon is facing a difficult decision regarding the F-35’s chronic, crippling problems with overheating brought on by its insufficient cooling capacity.Should the U.S. taxpayers pay for a costly upgrade to the stealth fighter’s cooling that will handle its immediate needs, or should U.S. taxpayers pay for a far more expensive upgrade that theoretically could handle increased future cooling needs?Before we briefly address the two options facing the Pentagon, let’s look at why cooling capacity is so important for the F-35 and why the most expensive weapons system program in world history produced a plane that was destined to have...

WASHINGTON — After protracted negotiations, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have reached an informal agreement, known as a “handshake deal,” for the next two production lots of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the parties confirmed to Breaking Defense.“We have reached an initial agreement as part of ongoing negotiations for the Lot 18/19 Air Vehicle Production Contract,” the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO) and Lockheed said in a joint statement.The statement did not share final quantities or prices, saying only that those figures will be disclosed “when a final agreement is signed.” The news was first reported by Air & Space...

The F-35 Lightning II, a cornerstone of U.S. military air superiority, faces significant readiness challenges. Despite the U.S. military operating 630 of the aircraft, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report reveals that all three branches flying the F-35 have failed to meet mission-capable (MC) rate targets for six consecutive years.