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| Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning II |
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — If US President-elect Donald Trump moves forward with trying to supplant Lockheed Martin’s F-35 with Boeing’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, he can expect to find opposition from the Air Force, the service’s top civilian said.
Trump made waves in December when — just a day after meeting the Defense Department’s F-35 program chief and CEOs from Lockheed and Boeing — he tweeted out that he had asked Boeing to price out a Super Hornet that would be “comparable” to an F-35.
While the president can determine whether to cancel a weapons program or direct the military to start a new one, the Air Force remains a strong supporter of the F-35 program, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told Defense News in a Jan. 5 interview.
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| Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet |
“The Air Force does not view the F/A-18 and the F-35 to be substitutable at all,” she said. “They fulfill different requirements. They’re both fine aircraft, don’t get me wrong. But it’s fourth generation, and F-35 is fifth generation.”
“The leaders of the Air Force will have the opportunity when the time comes to advise the president-elect on this,” she added. “But based on everything I know, the two are not interchangeable and the Air Force has not expressed interest in the F/A-18s.”
Read the full story at DefenseNews