The USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy's new supercarrier, can now land all of the service's planes, except for its new stealth fighter.
The Advanced Arresting Gear has been given a green light to recover all "propeller and jet" aircraft, to include the C-2A Greyhound, E-2C Hawkeye and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, and E/A-18G Growler, the Navy said in a statement Tuesday.
These aircraft can all conduct flight operations aboard the Ford.
Erie, Pennsylvania native 1st Lt. Catherine Stark earned her wings Friday at a ceremony in Kingsville, Texas, and in doing so became the first female Marine to be assigned to the U.S. Navy's F-35C fleet replacement squadron.
The F-35 Lightning II, designed and built by Lockheed Martin, is a fifth-generation fighter designed to replace the F-18 in the Navy and Marine Corps and the F-22 in the U.S. Air Force. Of the three models, the F-35C is designed specifically to take off and land on aircraft carriers.
The U.S. Navy's newest aircraft carrier won't be able to deploy with the service's newest warplane. At least not at first.
And Congress is unhappy about that, according to Ben Werner at USNI News.
The House Armed Services seapower and projection forces subcommittee included in its version of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act a ban on the Navy taking delivery of the Ford-class carrier John F. Kennedy unless the carrier can deploy with F-35C Lighting II stealth fighter, Ben Werner reported for USNI News.
EGLIN AFB — With gratitude for its seven years at Eglin and enthusiasm for the future in California, the Navy's first F-35C strike fighter squadron furled its flag in a Thursday morning ceremony.
The F-35C is the "carrier variant" version of the F-35 stealth fighter jet, designed specifically to operate from aircraft carriers.
"Today, we turn into the wind and launch on an aggressive path to deploy the F-35C," said Navy Capt. Max G. McCoy, commander of the Joint Strike Fighter Wing.
In February, the commander of the U.S. Naval Air Forces proclaimed that the Navy's F-35C Joint Strike Fighter was "ready for operations, ready for combat and ready to win" — even though the Navy's own testing data says otherwise.
A squadron of the U.S. Navy's newest fighters is aircraft carrier-qualified and ready to deploy, the Navy said Thursday. The announcement is a milestone for the Pentagon's trillion-dollar F-35 Joint Strike Fighter weapons program.
