First Female pilot flew the new F-35A stealth fighter into combat

Captain Emily ‘Banzai’ Thompson is the first woman to ever pilot an F-35A Lightning II fighter jet into combat, according to the Air Force

The F-35s were sent to the Middle East for a six-month deployment, according to a press release from Hill Air Force Base.

‘This is my first deployment … so for me it was a pretty big deal, the first combat sortie for me,’ she said.

‘Of course being the first female, it’s a pretty big honor.

‘There’s a lot of females who have come before me and there’s a lot of females already flying combat sorties in other platforms.

‘So just to be the person who gets that honor, that first, it just meant a lot.’

F-35A Lightning II is a single-seat, single-engine fighter aircraft made by Lockheed Martin Corp.

The Lightning II’s biggest selling point is its ability to evade enemy radar.

How stealthy it is, is not public; its radar cross-section - the size it ‘appears’ on a radar scope - is a heavily guarded secret.

In May 2018, Israel was the first country in the world to use an F-35A in operational activity.

The US took the advanced fighter jet into combat for the first time in September 2018, when the Marine Corps launched an amphibious assault on Taliban targets in Afghanistan.

The F-35A flew its first combat mission against ISIS in Iraq in April 2019.

The nearly $400billion price tag for the F-35 makes the program the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons acquisition ever.

Despite the huge cost, the program has strong bipartisan support in Congress, where lawmakers view the aircraft as essential to national security.

Current plans call for the United States to buy nearly 2,500 F-35s.

Close to $13billion will be needed annually between 2016 and 2038 to hit that procurement number, according to the Government Accountability Office.