Media Galleries : Combat Aircraft

Thailand traces its aviation history all the way back to 1912 when three of its military officers—Maj. Luang Sakdi Sanlayawut, Capt. Luang Arwut Likitkam, and Capt. Tip Ketuthat—earned their wings after successfully completing flight training in France. Their achievements made Thailand—then called Siam—the first country in Southeast Asia with a military flying unit.

F-35 Program Surpasses 100 pilots

The 301st FW has been moving toward Total Force Integration concept of operations since September 2007 when then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley announced the 301st would be one of the Active Association homes of TFI.

For most of 2012, the ITF operated six F-35As assigned to Edwards—three for flight sciences testing and three for mission systems testing. By the end of 2013, the ITF will be operating three additional F-35s—two F-35Bs and one F-35C, for a total of nine F-35s.

The F-35 Flight Test Update in the Volume 27, Number 3 issue of Code One concluded with the first aerial release of an AIM-120 AMRAAM on 19 October 2012. This tenth installment in the series of flight test updates on the F-35 program covers numerous other weapon releases as well as other achievements of the F-35 Integrated Test Force located at Edwards AFB, California, and at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland.

Early in 2012 we invited Code One readers and contributors to send us their best photos. We asked for recent, striking photographs of current Lockheed Martin aircraft to develop a “Best of Code One” theme for the 2013 edition of the calendar.

This Hercules packs a punch! Harvest HAWK is the armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance version of the Marine Corps KC-130J tanker that has proven very succesful in Afghanistan.

Since June 2012, the F-35 Integrated Test Force set new records of 135 System Development and Demonstration, or SDD, flights for 239 SDD flight hours and more than 1,100 test points in August 2012. With training pilot checkouts at Eglin AFB, Florida, and test pilot qualifications at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, fifty-five pilots have flown the F-35 Lightning II as of October 2012.

The F-35 Integrated Test Force, or ITF, at Pax, one of multiple test sites for the F-35 program, is responsible for flight testing the seagoing variants of the F-35, which include the short takeoff/vertical landing F-35B variant and the F-35C carrier variant.

More than 150 US Air National Guardsmen from the 187th Fighter Wing, the Alabama Air National Guard unit at Dannelly Field ANGB in Montgomery, deployed to Romania in August to participate in Dacian Viper 2012, a three-week joint exercise with the Romanian Air Force.