The U.S. Air Force First F-35 Combat Doesn’t Prove Anything

If dropping bombs on caves and tunnels were a guarantee of a weapon’s success, the F-35 would be awesome.On April 30, two U.S. Air Force F-35A stealth fighters attacked ISIS positions in Iraq. “The F-35As conducted the airstrike using a Joint Direct Attack Munition to strike an entrenched Daesh tunnel network and weapons cache deep in the Hamrin Mountains, a location able to threaten friendly forces,” according to the Air Force announcement.The strike marked the first time—or at least the first public admission—that the Air Force had used the Lightning II in combat. In September 2018, the Marine Corps became the first U.S. service to fly an F-35 combat mission, with a strike against Taliban positions in Afghanistan, followed by more than 100 F-35B sorties in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria from aircraft based on the amphibious assault ship USS Essex. First blood for the F-35 probably belongs to the Israeli Air Force, which has sent its F-35Is on missions over Syria.The initial Marine F-35 strikes in Afghanistan, and before that, Air Force F-22s attacking Taliban drug labs, drew as much ridicule as praise. Some questioned the use of expensive aircraft (the F-35 costs around $100 million apiece, the F-22 $400 million) to take out huts and tunnels. An F-35 mission costs $35,000 per flying hour, while for the F-22, it’s $70,000.

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