The Air Force on Thursday issued its list of 11 candidate bases that are the potential beddown locations for the first 250 to 300 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that are scheduled to enter its inventory by 2017. On the short list of operational bases are: Hill AFB, Utah; Mountain Home AFB, Idaho; and Shaw AFB, S.C., as well as McEntire Joint National Guard Base, S.C., and the Air National Guard stations in Burlington, Vt., and Jacksonville, Fla. On the short list of training locations are: Eglin AFB, Fla.; Holloman AFB N.M.; and Luke AFB, Ariz., as well as the ANG stations in Boise, Idaho, and Tuscon, Ariz. The Air Force said it selected these candidate installations out of the pool of more than 200 USAF sites using the “deliberate, repeatable, standardized, and transparent” process that it outlined in September. Continue
The F-47 fighter will be run differently than previous fighter programs and share the same mission systems architecture as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told the Senate Armed Services Committee. That means advances in one will fuel advances in the other.