The single-crew fighters can cost more than $100 million each. What to know about the jets.

Iran lashed out at the United States after a reported strike on an F-35 stealth fighter, calling the aircraft a “monument to arrogance” and claiming the incident signals the “collapse of an order” dominated by American military power amid the ongoing war in the West Asia triggered by US,

The ongoing Iran vs Israel-US war is the first dense air-defence combat environment in which the F-35 has operated—and it is apparent that contrary to the propagated myths, the F-35 is not invincible.

The F-35 was not built to win dogfights, but to operate smoothly at long ranges and over long periods of time. The F-35 is often compared to the F-16 or the F-22, nimble aircraft with world-class handling characteristics, against which the F-35 falls short.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says it struck a US F-35 fighter jet

The F-35 will also serve as a test bed for technologies that will become commonplace in the next generation of jets. Flying in coordination with AI-enabled drones will become a staple of any sixth-generation fighter, and those new fighter tricks will likely first arrive in the form of the F-35.

A dramatic shift may be unfolding in the skies over the Middle East, as Iran is believed to have struck a US F-35 stealth fighter jet, forcing an emergency landing. The incident, now under investigation,

The Pentagon says F-35s received no new combat upgrades last year, and that attempts to replace old software have stalled.