So, from that family, manned NGAD is on hold for now. 1st Increment of CCA is going forward pretty well. The plan was to have 200 manned NGAD and 1,000 CCA, but last year, the SECAF said that the number of CCAs bought could end up being as high as 2,000 on the long run. /1🧵

https://twitter.com/Doha104p3/status/1724620335478133076

For CCA Inc 1, Anduril's "Fury" and GA-ASI's offering based on XQ-67A design were chosen. B/w them, a design and the production decision will be made in FY-26. By FY-29, around 100 CCAs are expected to be built. Also, Raytheon is working with the contractors to integrate AMRAAM

A recap on what happened with the manned component of NGAD in 2024:
- The USAF was supposed to select a contractor sometimes this yr, most likely between Lockheed and Boeing
- In April, USAF requested $2.74 Billion in RDT&E for the FY-25, and planned to spend $19.6 over FY25-29 - The fate of manned NGAD came at a question in June when senior AF officials were talking about no decision being made yet and they'll have to make tough decisions as the budgetary situation gets tighter while having to fund already expensive and cost overruning programs.

Lockheed has been awarded a fixed price contract worth $11.7 Billion for Lot 18, which'll cover 145 aircraft. It includes 48 F-35A for USAF, 16 F-35B + 5 F-35C for USMC, 14 F-35C for the USN, 15 F-35A + 1 F-35B aircraft for non DOD partners, 39 F-35A + 7 F-35B for FMS customers.

https://twitter.com/Doha104p3/status/1859733896361127990

"Additionally, this modification provides tooling support for the governments of Italy and Japan’s final assembly and check out facilities."
One of the Christmas gifts came early this year.
Worth mentioning that the Flyaway unit cost would go up compared
defense.gov/News/Contracts…

"Our inventory objective for the F-35 is [1,763]. I don't know what we'll end up buying, and nobody can predict that right now. I know we're going to buy more, and we're going to be buying more for some period of time. At some point, this will be dependent on what we do with.... [Next Generation Air Dominance] and what we do with [Collaborative Combat Aircraft], we'll probably revisit that, [but] I don't think we're ready to do that yet,” ~ SecAF Kendall. The 1763 objective number was set around 2005 and the AF would most likely end up buying less.

F-35's DAS tracking the 2nd stage burnout of a Falcon 9 during a flight test from 1300+km away. F-35's sensor fusion plays and will play a big role in the future for BMD and we've seen it already over Israel (check the follow on tweet) Here's a video (compressed to hell for public release ofc) but shows EOTS footage of Houthi MRBM interception with an Arrow 3.

https://x.com/manniefabian/status/1720051819181756665

LM aeronautics president Greg Ulmer declines to state how many F-35s are in storage but expects to start delivering 20 aircraft per month, comprising seven stored and 13 newly-built aircraft. He estimates that it will take 10-12 months to clear off the backlog. (1/5) 🧵 LM has started flight acceptance for TR-3 jets, and the US gov has formally accepted 10 examples already, some of which have ferried to the end customer. Following certification by the US gov, aircraft then can be certificated for international customers.

A thread on the F-35's ESM/EW and countermeasures from what's publicly available. (1/15) 🧵

The F-35 has a fully integrated EW suite called ASQ-239 Barracuda, which is a further improvement of the ALR-94 on the F-22, but with greater reliability and lower cost. Barracuda forms one of the primary means of situational awareness on the aircraft, providing capabilities that includes 360° RWR coverage, offensive/defensive EW capabilities, targeting support (against airborne + land based emitters), self-protection (vs RF and IR threats), etc

A thread on the F-35's radar. (1/20) 🧵

The F-35 (all variants) currently carries the APG-81 radar, and starting at production lot 17 (2026ish), F-35's with a new radar (APG-85) will roll out of the production line.
I'll go over the basic and some stuff on APG-85 The APG-81 is a 3rd gen AESA radar made by Northrop, which derives from the original APG-77 on F-22. It has 1,676 Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) T/RMs. The radar features great LPI characteristics (allowing the aircraft to use the radar w low chance of detection) and long-range

The F-35's datalink capabilities (1/18) 🧵

The F-35 has 2 primary data links. They are Link 16 and MADL. I'll go over the general stuff and focus more on MADL here since people are kinda familiar with Link 16. + some extra stuff Both Link 16 and MADL are 2 major parts of Northrop's ASQ-242 integrated Communication, Navigation, and Identification system (CNI). CNI was designed to give F-35 advanced communication capabilities, and in total, it includes more than 27 functionalities.

Some (most) of the shit Turkish accounts are posting today are pure brain rot.
All the aircraft mentioned except Su-57 and Indian one (which is yet to fly) first flight went well.
The F-35 crashed less than 15 times after 800k flight hours, having one of the best crash record

https://twitter.com/DDGrubu/status/1761064675347779593

KAAN flew only once and yall are already over hyping the fuck out of it
Turkish Aerospace industry has come a long way. And congratulations on the first flight, but your aircraft isn't superior to F-35, nor to F-22, and likely not to J-20 either. Some of these posts r stupid.

Herritage's new report calls USAF "very weak", mainly due to low readiness rate, shortage of pilots, and pilots not getting enough flight hours.
These are valid concerns, but saying "very weak" is just dumb. Also, not their first time.
heritage.org/military-stren…
While I definitely do not agree w their conclusion, the report also includes some stuff like aircraft and munitions inventory. USAF has 1,432 active-duty fighters, with 886 of them being combat-coded.
Also, more F-35As than any other aircraft variant in *active duty*.

So, here's a thread on the times the F-35 has been used in combat. (The dates are not in order)🧵 In 2018, 🇮🇱 became the first to use F-35 in combat. According to an Israeli major Gen, “We are flying the F-35 all over the ME and have already attacked twice on two different fronts”. Didn't specify what they hit, but released a photo of F-35I over 🇱🇧
haaretz.com/middle-east-ne…

Communication problem, Carriers's EW & Air defense aside.
Show me a drone that Is cheap, can hit a *moving ship*, hard to jam, Has the necessary range (1,200+ km at least), has the speed (avg drone speeds 200>kmph, will take u 5 hrs to hit something over 1k km away). (1/

https://twitter.com/Kanthan2030/status/1670004533613969410

And Carries explosives big enough to do some damage...
if one solves all these problems to an
extent, then the resultant drone will
be quite big, easy to detect, & will cost millions of dollar. That will reduce the size of the drone army significantly.

"People talk about in Missile Defence, the difficulty of hitting bullet with a bullet. But I will tell you that where we are with the technology today - we can do better than that. We can hit a spot on bullet, with a bullet and that's actually what we do in our Missile Defence..

https://twitter.com/Mauro_Gilli/status/1658459050521030661

tests" - Lt. Gen. Henry, Former Director of Missile Defence Agency.
Basically, with the kinetic HTK warhead on our interceptors (Pac3, THAAD, SM3), hits a specific part of the BM. normally, the warhead. And SM3 has demonstrated that capability IRL when it shot down USA-193.