First Lt. Michael Seltzer, an F-16 pilot recently returning from a five-hour mission over Iraq with two bombs still onboard discovered a problem with his fighter’s landing gear. His emergency checklist procedure failed to correct the problem as he circled, getting ever lower on fuel. The Viper pilot was in luck because a KC-135 crew already airborne had some fuel to spare, enabling Seltzer to tank up and head toward Southwest Asia’s largest lake, where he jettisoned his bombs. (Read more here from Air Force journalist SrA. Kerry Solan-Johnson.)
As Lockheed Martin prepares to release the first F-35 Block 4 software updates this summer, the company and the Joint Program Office are already well into analyses that will decide what will comprise Block 5 and later upgrades, Lockheed’s F-35 program manager said. For now though, some of the new…