A test pilot has revealed in a secret report that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter failed miserably in mock dogfights.
The details of the report were first broken by a military news blog, War Is Boring, which obtained the five-page report. The memo is unclassified but was labeled “for official use only.”
According to War Is Boring, the report was “scathing” and said the fighter jet cannot turn and is too slow to avoid enemy gunfire. The expensive new fighter did worse in trials than older jets.
The pricey new stealth jet can’t turn or climb fast enough to hit an enemy plane during a dogfight or dodge the enemy’s own gunfire, the pilot reported following a day of mock air battles back in January.
“The F-35 was at a distinct energy disadvantage,” the unnamed pilot wrote in a scathing five-page brief that War Is Boring has obtained. The brief is unclassified but is labeled “for official use only.”
The test pilot’s report is the latest in mounting evidence that the F-35 has fundamental design problems. The program has cost more than a trillion dollars, is history’s most expensive weapon.
These fighters, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, are meant to replace existing fighter jets that the U.S. military and their allies own.
David Axe, reporting for War Is Boring concluded:
In the end, the F-35 — the only new fighter jet that America and most of its allies are developing — is demonstrably inferior in a dogfight with the F-16, which the U.S. Air Force first acquired in the late 1970s…And that means that, within a few decades, American and allied aviators will fly into battle in an inferior fighter — one that could get them killed … and cost the United States control of the air.
FoxNews.com spoke with officials at the Department of Defense who maintain that the plane was not outfitted with some of the F-35’s most important technology used in close-range battles.
The leaking of the report is under investigation by the Department of Defense.