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Israel's first F-35A Lightning II fighter jet is revealed during a ceremony.  (Lockheed Martin) « less Israel received three F-35s from the US on Tuesday, bringing its total inventory of the revolutionary fighter up to five, but according to a French journalist citing French intelligence reports, Israeli F-35s have already carried out combat missions in Syria. In Air Forces Monthly,  Thomas Newdick  summarized  a report  from Georges Malbrunot at the French newspaper Le Figaro that said Israel took its F-35s out on a combat mission one month after getting them from the US. Malbrunot reported that on January 12, Israeli F-35s took out a Russian-made S-300 air defense system around Syrian President Bashar Assad's palace in Damascus and a Russian-made Pantsir-S1 mobile surface-to-air missile system set for delivery to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has  repeatedly and firmly asserted  that its goal to make sure weapons cannot reach Hezbollah...

An F-35 fighter pilot and ground crew member check out their plane before a training mission at Hill Air Force Base in Ogden, Utah, March 15, 2017. (Photo by AFP) The US Air Force is deploying F-35 jets to Estonia, putting the service’s newest fighter jets even closer to Russia’s doorstep. F-35A stealth Joint Strike Fighters flew from a base in the United Kingdom to Estonia, which has an almost 200-mile-long border with Russia. The advanced aircraft flew from Hill Air Force Base in Utah to Royal Air Force’s Lakenheath airfield earlier this month. Officials noted at the time that the Air Force also planned several “out and back” flights to other NATO nations that would help familiarize pilots with the region. ‘F-35 on first operational deployment to Europe’ The fighter jets arrived at the Ämari Air Base on Tuesday and will remain in the Baltic country for “several weeks.” The move was seen by Estonian defense officials as a gesture underscoring the US commitment to...

I can imagine quite a few horror scenarios onboard an airplane. Looking outside your window and seeing fighter jets is definitely at the very top of that list. That was the reality this week for passengers aboard an Indian Jet Airways flight bound for London that lost contact with air traffic controllers in Cologne, Germany, leading German Air Force  Eurofighter Typhoons  to scramble and intercept the plane. Video of the incident was captured by a trailing British Airways plane, which comes to us from the Facebook page of  CirrusPilot : That’s something you don’t see every day. The  Times of India  reports the plane, a Boeing 777-300ER flying from Mumbai to London, did not respond to air traffic control in Cologne due to some kind of communications failure. Luckily, Typhoons scrambled to intercept the plane were able to reestablish communications between it and air traffic control, and once that happened it safely continued its flight to London, the newspape...