F/A-18 Legacy Hornets Have Left The Navy’s Carrier Decks For The Last Time Now that the Hornet has bowed out of the TACAIR Integration initiative, its place will be taken by the F-35C, the first of 67 examples of the carrier variant of the Joint Strike Fighter for the Marine Corps having arrived at Miramar in January last year. VMFA-314, the initial Marine F-35C squadron, is scheduled to deploy within a carrier air wing in 2022; eventually, there will be four such Marine F-35C squadrons available. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...eft-the-navys-carrier-decks-for-the-last-time
In a sense, F-35A is totally just desserts for the USAF, which jealously guarded against all encroachments and wanted to do it all, so now it’s saddled with something that purportedly does it all. Here’s a piece of history that illustrates the mindset that got it here: TL;DW - USAF killed Air Wolf because it wanted the A-10, which it now hates flying and wants to replace with F-35A but isn’t allowed to do.
As of early January, the F-35 enterprise has amassed over 773,000 flying hours, trained over 2,280 pilots and 15,400 maintainers across 14 flying services around the world, and flown more than 469,000 total sorties. There are now 32 bases and 11 ships hosting or capable of hosting F-35 units. As of now, there are a whopping 17 countries participating in the international Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program. https://www.twz.com/the-1000th-f-35-has-been-built
Years of platform upgrades have made this a beast. They threw more money to turn it around and is now "cheap" in comparison. The F14 and F22 are much more loved and much more expensive...
