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The stealth technology of America's fifth-generation jet fighters, the F-22 and the F-35, could be obsolete after a new discovery from the University of Rochester in New York. One main goal of fifth-generation aircrafts is to slip through skies over enemy lines without being targeted. It's not invisible, but elusive, and digitally feisty.The F-35's lineup of electronic tools, work toward that end, by using a variety of sophisticated and devastating radar defeating moves. Combined with internal weapons storage, special composite skin, and reduced angles of design, the fighter does all it can to work past the weaknesses in today's aircraft detection. Lockheed Martin...

Denmark has decided to wait, until 2014, to decide what to replace its elderly F-16 fleet with. Meanwhile, 18 of the F-16s will be retired. But the other 30 will be refurbished so that they can continue to operate for the rest of the decade. Denmark had wanted to replace the F-16s with F-35s. But the F-35 keeps getting delayed (now more than two years behind schedule), and is becoming more expensive (nearly a hundred percent over budget). The Danish F-35 buy is no longer a sure thing. The delays have lots of users concerned. The U.S. Navy has been...

A supersonic Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter rode more than 41,000 pounds of thrust to a vertical landing today for the first time, confirming its required ability to land in confined areas both ashore and afloat. “Today’s vertical landing onto a 95-foot square pad showed that we have the thrust and the control to maneuver accurately both in free air and in the descent through ground effect,” said F-35 Lead STOVL Pilot Graham Tomlinson. Tomlinson performed an 80-knot (93 miles per hour) short takeoff from Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., at 1:09 p.m. EDT. About 13 minutes...

Inspite of strenuous efforts by the world's largest defence contractor, Lockheed Martin, to contradict reports that the Joint Strike Fighter programme was heading for substantial cost and time overruns, it has now been confirmed in Pentagon testimony before the US Congress's Senate Armed Services Committee that the cost of the programme has increased 60 to 90 per cent in real terms since 2001. Even as the Pentagon steps into overdrive trying to reassure stakeholders, which are three armed services of the United States and eight partner nations that it will take all required steps to deal with the problems, Congressional...

Continual price hikes and delays in final production have made the American Joint Strike Fighter an albatross around the neck of Danish Defence One of the jets that Danish Defence has been considering as a replacement for its F-16s just got more expensive – again. The US Defence Department has upped the price of American manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s Joint Strike Fighter to 540 million kroner per plane, according to news agency AFP. But when original negotiations for purchasing the jets began in 1999, the going rate was around 275 million kroner per plane. The US military, which has been heavily...

Note: The following text is a quote: Official Announces Plans to Curb Fighter Program’s Cost By Jordan Reimer American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, March 12, 2010 – The Defense Department will require a shift to a fixed-price contract in its negotiations with Lockheed Martin for the initial production phase of the F-35 Lightning II joint strike fighter, a defense official said here today in a briefing at the Pentagon. Ashton B. Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, holds a Pentagon news conference March 12, 2010, to talk about the acquisition reforms being instituted to keep the joint...

Defense: The administration decision to scrap a proven aircraft in favor of a supposedly cheaper, more flexible replacement is proving to be an expensive mistake. We may wind up defenseless and broke. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that was supposed to be America's frontline fighter for the foreseeable future is in big trouble. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the general in charge of the program this week amid concerns of spiraling costs and program delays. Gates also announced he is withholding $614 million in fees from the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. Daniel J. Crowley, one of Lockheed Martin's project managers,...

The debate over the F-22 Raptor has been carried out at the customary level of simplemindedness we've become used to with Congress handling military questions. Since the early 60s, the favored method of killing a military program has been to come up with an argument easily expressed in a sound bite and stick with it. This time, the sound bite was, "Why do we need two fighter planes, anyway?" The answer is even simpler: we need two fighters because need two fighters. The historical record clearly reveals this: every air campaign carried out with two distinct and particularly formulated fighter...

A two-year delay in the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) entering service in the US Air Force won't adversely affect Australia, the government says. The fighter isn't scheduled to become operational with the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) until 2018. A spokesman for Defence Minister John Faulkner said Australia has always adopted a cautious approach to the issues of what the JSF would cost and when it would be delivered. He said Australia's plans to acquire the JSF featured cost and schedule buffers to deal with the program restructuring recently announced by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. "If the USAF IOC...

The Air Force is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on two fighter jets that probably will never be used to support troops on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Congress has decided to cap production of the F-22, removing funding for the fifth-generation fighter from the 2010 military budget. And the F-35 — also known as the Joint Strike Fighter — won’t be ready for prime time before 2013, according to the latest estimates. Critics of the new fighters say they are too expensive and not needed in today's warfare, while proponents argue that the current aircraft are not...

The U.S. Navy has been nervously watching as the costs of the new F-35C and F-35B carrier aircraft increase. It comes down to this. Currently, it costs the navy, on average, $19,000 an hour to operate its AV-8 vertical takeoff and F-18C fighter aircraft. It costs 63 percent more to operate the F-35C (which will replace the F-18C) and the F-35B (which will replace the AV-8). These costs include buying the aircraft, training and maintaining the pilots, the aircraft and purchasing expendable items (fuel, spare parts, munitions.) Like the F-22, which recently had production capped at less than 200 aircraft,...

Defence Minister John Faulkner has announced the Government has approved buying the first batch of Joint Strike Fighters. Senator Faulkner says the Government will buy 14 of the next generation aircraft at a cost of about $3 billion, to be delivered from 2014. He says the fighters are expected to be ready for testing in five years and in operation from 2018. The Government plans to buy 100 of the fighters, which would be Australia's biggest defence purchase. Senator Faulkner says the Joint Strike Fighters will make sure Australia maintains its strategic capability. "This decision was underpinned by an unprecedented...

The Japanese ministry of defence has selected the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning-II as its next mainstay fighter jet but will sign a contract for 40 of these 'high-tech' fighters only in 2011, in order to ensure that the much-talked about stealth jet actually delivers on its performance parameters. Japanese agency reports say the defence ministry will seek fiscal allocation only in the 2011 budget for the purchase of 40 of these advanced 'stealth' fighter jets. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a fifth-generation, single-seat, single-engine, stealth, multirole fighter that, currently, is estimated to cost 9 yen billion ($101 million)...