F-35 sees first combat missions in Israel.

An Israeli F-35. BBC/IDF.

The controversial F-35 has flown its first combat missions in Israel. BBC. The Chief of Israel's Air Force said that the F-35 had been in combat on "two different fronts" but didn't elaborate on which countries that could be. The F-35 has been criticized for being so expensive and has not yet served in combat for the nation that developed the fighter, the United States. Israel has 50 of the fighters and may order an additional 25. The use of the new fighter is seen as a message to Iran. 

My Comment:

I'm kind of surprised that it took this long for the F-35 to make it into combat. I guess I shouldn't be since the F-22 didn't get into combat until 2014. But given the respective role for both fighters you would think that the F-35 would have made it into combat a lot sooner. The F-22 is an air superiority fighter and wasn't needed until we got into the contested air space of Syria. The F-35 is a multi-role fighter and one of those roles, a bomb truck, would have been fine for Syria. 

I think it is fairly embarrassing for the United States that Israel was the one that used the F-35 first. We developed the fighter and paid for most of it but we haven't used it yet. And even though Israel is a close ally, they aren't Americans. Given how much the American taxpayer has paid for this plane it really should have been us that used it first. We have plenty of targets in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan we could have used. 

I'm not sure what target the F-35 hit. The Air Force chief said that they had missions on two different fronts but didn't say what those fronts were. The obvious one is Syria where Israel has conducted several major airstrikes recently. The only other place I can think of is the Palestinian territories, which given current events, makes a lot of sense. 

The F-35 is a good choice for the kind of environment that you would find in Syria. Syria has some air defenses left and their Russian allies are well equipped. The F-35's have stealth capabilities and would be able to avoid Syrian air defenses. Plus if they had tangled up with Syrian fighters they would have been able to shoot them down easily. Their most advanced fighter is the MIG-29 and I doubt their pilots would be of the same quality as the Israelis. 

Still, the criticism of the F-35 doesn't have much to do with the kind of mission they did in Syria. Most of the criticism is on the extreme cost of the plane. The rest is about how it can't seem to win dogfights when compared to even current generation fighters. Nobody disagrees that the plane can drop bombs and launch missiles but as a dogfighter the F-35 has come under criticism.  

It is good though that the F-35 finally got some combat experience. Hopefully the Israelis are nice and let us see detailed information about how the F-35 performed so we can learn from their experience. At the very least it seems that the Israeli strikes were successful as I am sure we would have heard if one was shot down or even damaged.