HONOLULU \u2014 The U.S. and its Asia-Pacific allies are rolling out their new stealth fighter jet, a cutting-edge plane that costs about $100 million each.
“The idea with fifth generation is that we want to be able to operate in areas where others cannot, in places where our fourth-generation airplanes can’t fly,” Wills said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. Marine Corps in January deployed 10 of the planes to a base in Japan. The U.S. Air Force plans to station the jet in Alaska within three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Australia and Japan have already taken delivery of some of planes that they are using for pilot training in Arizona. South Korea is scheduled to get the plane next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The F-35 is being built in different configurations for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The Navy’s version is designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The F-35 had massive budget overruns early on, but analysts say the cost has stabilized and even dropped a bit after negotiations between the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based think tank, said the F-35 can make a “huge difference” in places like North Korea, where it could defeat air defenses and take out threats before they could react.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The F-35 could fly all the way from South Korea to the North Korean capital without anyone from North Korea knowing it was on its way,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Air Force currently has 103 planes in its possession, including one fully operational fighter wing at Hill Air Force Base in Utah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other than Alaska, Wills said the Air Force hasn’t decided where in the Pacific it will station additional planes. Alaska’s Eielson Air Force Base is expected to get two squadrons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Air Force currently bases F-22 jets in Hawaii and Alaska. Wills said the F-22 was designed to face down other fighter jets in the air but also have an ability to hit ground targets. The F-35 was designed to strike ground targets and for air-to-air combat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Air Force this week hosted allies and partners in Hawaii for a symposium on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which can sneak undetected behind enemy radar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":73443,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":88,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2899],"class_list":["post-135124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"D3XGG5TGZ5CEJOVBE6RVQCNCQI","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2017\/03\/17\/us-asia-pacific-allies-roll-out-f-35-stealth-fighter\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n