Trump Wants A Twin-Engine “F-55” Version Of The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
May 16th, 2025With a lifetime program cost now estimated at $2.1 trillion, the F-35 is easily one of the largest U.S. weapon boondoggles of all time.
And now, Lockheed Martin, through its ventriloquist dummy Donald Trump:
“Hold my beer.”
What’s to be done about the Pentagon failing seven audits in a row?
Increase its budget even more, of course:
The defense budget is expected to surpass the $1 trillion threshold overall for the first time, reaching $1.01 trillion.
Remember the one about DOGE eliminating fraud?
That’s all fine, as long as it doesn’t involving sniffing around any domains that end in .mil.
Via: The War Zone:
In a surprise development, President Donald Trump has said that he wants the United States to develop a twin-engine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which he has named the F-55. Exactly how far such a concept has progressed, at this stage, is very much open to question, but it does raise some interesting questions about the futures of both the F-35 and the F-47, the Air Force’s next-generation crewed stealth fighter.
Trump was speaking in Qatar today, where he also visited U.S. forces stationed at Al Udeid Air Base. The U.S. president’s Qatar visit also coincided with Boeing securing its biggest-ever deal for widebody airliners, Qatar Airways ordering 160 777X and 787 jets worth $96 billion.
On the F-35, Trump said, “We’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade, but we’re also doing an F-55. I’m going to call it an F-55, and that’s going to be a substantial upgrade, but it’s going to be also with two engines because the F-35 has a single engine. I don’t like single engines.”
