Pentagon’s chief weapons tester believes F-35 not ready for flight training

Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon’s Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, says the risk of a serious mishap during flight training of the F-35 is pretty high.

Gilmore said his office did some research and found the F-35A had an air abort rate “equivalent to 3,000 aborts per 100,000 flight hours.”

“A high abort rate correlates to a higher risk of catastrophic failure, including a Class A mishap.”