THE FRIDAY FOTO (June 7, 2024)

LIGHTNING’S CHILD.

(U.S. Air Force photo by 1st Lieutenant Michael Luangkhot) Please click on the photo to enlarge the image.

A U.S. Air Force F-35A Lightning II sits on the tarmac during night operations at Dannelly Field, Alabama on May 29, 2024. Training at all hours ensures pilots and aircraft maintainers of the 187th Fighter Wing remain prepared to accomplish the mission regardless of the time, according to the Air Force.

The F-35A is the Air Force version of America’s newest supersonic strike fighter aircraft. In addition to the conventional-takeoff-and-landing (CTOL) variant for the Air Force, there’s an aircraft-carrier version (CV) for the Navy, and a short-takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) version for the Marine Corps.  The single-engine, single-seat F-35 is designed to replace aging fighter inventories including the Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II (AKA Warthog) and F-16 Fighting Falcon, as well as Navy and Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets and Marine Corps AV-8B Harriers.

Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, with partners  Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems, the F-35 is America’s newest Fifth Generation Fighter, combining stealth (radar and heat detection avoidance) technology with an advanced sensor package designed to gather, fuse and distribute more information than any fighter in history for unprecedented situational awareness.

F-35’s development, years in the making, is also the Defense Department’s most expensive weapon system program. It is estimated it will cost over $1.7 trillion to buy, operate, and sustain these aircraft over several decades, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The F-35 is called the Lightning II in homage to an earlier Lockheed fighter plane, the  twin engine P-38 Lightning.

P-38s flew aerial coverage for the fleets of cargo planes dropping paratroopers over Normandy the night before the D-Day amphibious landings. They also patrolled the skies above the beaches in daylight hours, retired Army Air Corps Colonel Richard Heyman, a 364th Fighter Group P-38 fighter pilot, recalled in a D-Day 80th anniversary interview (scroll down page to the middle video under Voices of the War headline).