F-35 Jet Will Likely Change How America Fights Wars | Military.com: Perhaps the best-kept secret of the top-secret F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is that it might be the best airplane of its kind in the world -- and that it will likely change the way America fight its wars.
Plagued by cost overruns, mechanical gremlins and fears that its high-tech sensors would overload a human pilot's ability to analyze the aerial battlefield, the $379 billion project for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps infamously became known in the Pentagon as "acquisition malpractice."
With mounting delays in getting these fighters to the fleet, the Navy is scrambling to revamp its aging Hornet strike aircraft, pushing them far beyond their anticipated service lives. To keep the Marines' Harrier II ground-attack planes, the Corps bought scrapped British jets to cannibalize for parts.
But two F-35 squadrons at the Marines' air station in Yuma, Ariz., are now classified as "operational."
