That the F-35 Lightning II has been prohibited from flying anywhere near lightning is ironic. That the F-35 has been under development since 1994 and that the Pentagon “doesn’t have a path forward” to fix the F-35 is unforgivable.
That a plane that’s supposed to be the foundation of American air supremacy has an Achilles heel so easily exploitable is a glaring example of how our military procurement system wastes taxpayer dollars while failing to provide the weapon systems needed to meet our national security needs.
Yes, the F-35, the aging “wunder plane” that the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin have been assuring us for decades is just that one fix away from being ready for full-rate production, isn’t allowed to fly within 25 miles of a thunderstorm.
So far, the indefinite restriction has been publicly announced as applying “only” to the Air Force’s F-35A. But given the F-35 Joint Program Office’s history of hiding and “managing” bad news, it would not be at all surprising to find out that the same restrictions are in place for the Marines’ F-35B and the Navy’s F-35C, but have not yet been made public. That having this unpublicized policy in place could make sense was demonstrated in July 2021 when two F-35Bs flying out of their airbase in Japan were forced to execute emergency landings after they both suffered millions of dollars worth of lightning damage in the same storm.