{"id":5868,"date":"2019-01-12T20:45:16","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T20:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=5868"},"modified":"2019-01-12T20:45:16","modified_gmt":"2019-01-12T20:45:16","slug":"britains-f-35-jets-are-ready-for-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/britains-f-35-jets-are-ready-for-operations\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain’s F-35 jets are \u2018ready for operations\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s F-35B fighters are ready for combat: UK defense chief<\/strong><\/p>\n

Britain has declared that its new fleet of nine F-35B Lightning fighter planes are combat-ready.<\/p>\n

The announcement was made by Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson during a Jan. 10 visit to the Royal Air Force base in Marnham, England.<\/p>\n

The Defence Secretary said the F-35 Lightning jets are now ‘ready for operations’ as he promised the air force had the ‘power to dominate the skies into the 2040s’.<\/p>\n

“The incredible F-35 jets are ready for operations, a transformed Typhoon [a fighter plane about to go out of service] has the power to dominate the skies into the 2040s, and we continue to look even further into an ambitious future,” Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said.<\/p>\n

He also confirmed the successful culmination of a $540 million program to upgrade the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoon fleet with Storm Shadow cruise missiles, the Meteor air-to-air missile and the Brimstone ground-attack weapon.<\/p>\n

“With its cutting-edge stealth technology, our F-35s are now ready to deploy on operations and, alongside our combat-proven Typhoon, offer a step-change in our ability to employ air power around the world,”\u00a0said Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier<\/p>\n

The British Air Force has nine of the short-take-off, vertical-landing version of the F-35 ready for overseas deployment.<\/p>\n

Sixteen F-35B aircraft have been delivered to the British and some 17 more fighters will be built under the $700 million contract for delivery between 2020 and 2022.<\/p>\n

The British have said they will buy 48 jets to meet immediate requirements for a joint RAF\/Royal Navy force and have committed to buying a total of 138 aircraft, though officials have given only a vague timeline.<\/p>\n

The jets will form the backbone of the UK\u2019s combat air fleet alongside the Typhoon jets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain’s F-35B fighters are ready for combat: UK defense chief Britain has declared that its new fleet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Britain's F-35B fighters are ready for combat: UK defense chief","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,1],"tags":[227,256,211,6,357,286,113,61],"class_list":["post-5868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-air-force","tag-aircraft","tag-britain","tag-defense","tag-europe","tag-fighter-jet","tag-security","tag-uk"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/F-35B_Lightning.jpg?fit=690%2C370&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-1wE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5872,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions\/5872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}