Lockheed Martin F-35A Lightning

F-24 doesnt roll off the tongue and also doesn’t reflect the international development of the project

Anyway the key before the f-22 designation was a kfir so it doesn’t exactly make sense in the first place

JASSM-ERs for Italy’s F-35s (and potentially other aircraft too)

1 Like

Not the A model but shows potential external loadouts:


And here some cool outside cockpit photos:

4 Likes

What’s that thing on the centerline pylon?

looks like a gun pod to me, 169618 numbered f35 seems f35b from google search

1 Like

F-35B doesn’t have an internal gun?

only A model does

That’s crazy
Btw you can see it’s a F-35B, you can see the doors of the vtol turbine on the belly

yeah should have seen that lol, i got focused on that serial number

1 Like

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/11/usa-approves-first-aim-260a-jatm-export-to-australia/

Indirect confirmation F-35 integration has happened or is ongoing.

I think in the future it will turn into an F-35 fighter jet free-for-all because most of the countries in the game have F-35 fighter jets, like the UK, Israel, Japan, and Denmark from Sweden.

Yeah only the F-35A’s have internal guns. B’s and C’s rely on the GAU-22 gunpod.
image

I guess they never did learn from the mistakes of removing the guns from the Phantoms.

4 Likes

I mean there are real constraints but honestly missiles have gotten good enough

Again, that’s what they thought during Vietnam. “The age of dogfighting is over” when in reality it was far from it. But still even with how advanced missiles are now it doesn’t hurt to have a backup in the form of a gun, especially one that doesn’t kill performance and stealth capabilities.

The missiles now are actually really good though. Im just glad the A has a gun

Guns do weigh a good bit too, especially with ammo. And they take up internal space

It’s a shame the B never had an internal gun. Could have been pretty fun having the flight performance and VTOL without the drag of the gunpod.

Oh yeah definitely. But I’d imagine the weight of the internal gun + ammo would still be better than the weight + drag of the gunpod by a bit.

2 Likes

tbf im pretty sure more US players will be in F-22 than F-35

I would probably split F-35A and B between two lines, so both have rank IX stuff.
Smth like that, considering planned changes:

2 Likes