F-35 Lighting II, the future jet, will give the U.S. the capability to fly into enemy space first and attack a target with precision weapons at long ranges to clear the way for further forces -- without ever being detected.Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II is a 5th-generation stealth fighter developed to safely penetrate areas without enemy radar seeing them -- an enhanced degree of “invisibility” that the 4th generation cannot achieve. Last Friday, the U.S. Marine Corps' VMFAT-501 training squadron in Florida’s Eglin AFB launched its first F-35B eight-ship, flew a mission, hot-pit refueled and went back up again.
This mission is the latest in a series of promising steps forward for the F-35.
Last month, the stealth fighter also had its landmark first short takeoff and vertical landing during a night mission. The test provided further data on the fighterÂ’s special helmet and lighting in operations at night.
Since the program kicked off in the early 1990s, the F-35 development has been bombarded with criticism varying from targeting as the PentagonÂ’s most expensive equipment through to concerns voiced in a Pentagon Operational Test and Evaluation Office that the fighter could not fly near thunderstorms or risk the jetÂ’s fuel tank exploding.