What Goes Up…

An extraordinary stand-down order from the United States Air Force’s Air Combat Command promises to reignite debate over the reliability and efficacy of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II—known colloquially as the Joint Strike Fighter.

The F-35 program’s staggering lifetime cost of $1.508-TRILLION represents history’s loftiest defense expenditure. Notwithstanding the single-seat, single-engine, all-weather, stealth, multirole combat aircraft’s kingly price-tag, critics of the F-35—many of whom are highly-regarded engineers, aerodynamicists, and air-combat veterans—assert the airplane is an overwrought, over-priced, over-hyped paper-tiger that speaks to the predatory avarice of the military-industrial-complex.

Love it or hate it, the USAF has grounded the majority of its F-35s in the continental United States—thereby taking its most advanced combat fighter jets out of service—to inspect faulty ejection seats.

The grounding was occasioned by the discovery of problems in the ejection seats of numerous U.S. Naval aircraft.

U.S. Air Force spokeswoman Alexi Worley put forth in an emailed statement: “Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process. Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations.”

The ACC to which Worley refers is Air Combat Command—the Air Force division tasked with overseeing the majority of the USAF F-35s based in the contiguous United States.

The grounding significantly reduces the number of fifth-generation combat jets available to back the reckless saber-rattling in which Washington has indulged in the wakes of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and China’s threatened annexation of Taiwan. In March 2022, the Pentagon deployed F-35’s and support aircraft to Eastern Europe in hopes of deterring further Russian belligerence. To date, the tactic has neither impressed Moscow nor dissuaded Russia from its tactical objectives.

U.S. Navy and Marine Corps officials have not yet grounded their F-35s.

The grounding is the latest in a string of military ejection seat issues in recent years. The F-35 ejection seat is manufactured by the British firm Martin-Baker.

Spokespeople for the Pentagon’s F-35 program office and Lockheed Martin were not available for comment.

FMI: www.lockheedmartin.com