US Central Command believes that, on Saturday, an airstrike using a precision guided munition killed the “senior al Qaeda terror consultant and foreign fighter facilitator known as ‘Sheik,’ ” who was in a house in Ubaydi in western Iraq. Officials think the Sheik was in the area to confer with Abu Islam, another top al Qaeda figure killed in a recent airstrike. Connecting the dots: A USAF F-16 on Saturday flew a pre-planned strike, firing one GBU-38. It was the only preplanned airstrike noted for that day. Bingo.
It'll take up to 18 months for Lockheed Martin to deliver the 100 or so F-35s that went directly from production line to storage, awaiting the completion of Tech Refresh 3 testing. Customers haven't complained about the order in which the backlog is being delivered.