
President-elect Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee backed the F-35 during his Senate nomination hearing Thursday, but was noncommittal toward the Air Force’s next-generation nuclear cruise missile, one of the service’s major modernization efforts moving forward.Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis also defended Trump’s use of Twitter to criticize the F-35 program, saying Trump has the right intentions.“He has, in no way, shown a lack of support for the program,” Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) during his nomination hearing.…