The F-35A next-generation fighter scored a kill ratio of 20 times its losses in the recently completed Red Flag combat training exercise in Nevada, an Air Force general said on Thursday.
Reports that the kill ratio of the F-35As was 15-to-one “is actually a little bit off the mark,” Lt. Gen. Jerry Harris, deputy chief of staff for Strategic Plans and Requirements at Air Force Headquarters, told a House Armed Services Committee panel. The kill ratio was 20-to-one, he said.
“The airplane is doing exactly what we need it to do,” Harris told the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee.
During the simulated combat exercise, which was hosted by Nellis AFB for three weeks in January and February, Air Force pilots flying the F-35A took out 140 aggressor aircraft and suffered just seven losses. A 10-to-one kill ratio is considered “very good,” a spokesman for the F-35 joint program office told Defense Daily on Friday.
Harris said that 13 F-35As were deployed for Red Flag and flew 207 of a planned 226 sorties “with zero maintenance non-deliveries and maintained greater than a 90 percent mission capable rate.” He said Red Flag staff canceled 19 sorties “for weather, not due to F-35 limitations.”
“That is simply an awesome effort,” Harris said.
The F-35 is being developed and produced by Lockheed Martin [LMT]. The company has delivered more than 200 aircraft so far. The Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy and select allied countries are in the process of procuring different variants of the F-35.
Air Force Lt. Gen. Christopher Bogdan, the program executive officer for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, told the panel that the aircraft’s results at Red Flag “far exceeded my expectations.” He said that the program is only about 25 to 30 percent toward full maturity yet the fact that it had a mission capable rate greater than 90 percent and no sorties lost due to maintenance issues “tells me that this airplane is just getting better, and better, and better day in and day out.”
The Air Force is currently flying the Block 3i configuration of the F-35A, which achieved initial operating capability last August, and is awaiting the completion of development on the Block 3F version, which will allow the aircraft to carry more and different types of weapons, give it better targeting, communications and identification capabilities.
Harris said the pilots and maintainers working with the F-35A Block 3i are “pleased” with the aircraft. He said the pilots that he has spoken with are “pleased with the way the aircraft handles,” adding that the “destruction of targets both in the air and on the ground, continues to be at rates higher than expected.”