Historical Profile.

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, result of the Joint Strike Fighter program, is the most advanced expression of military aircraft to perform close support and ground attack duties. Its extreme flexibility makes it suitable also to the "dogfighting" and to carry out missions of air superiority. The F-35 is a fifth generation multirole fighters, with stealth capability, that intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircrafts of the Western Countries Air Forces. The development project is based on three main models: the F-35A is a conventional takeoff and landing variant, the F-35B is a short take-off and vertical-landing variant, and the F-35C is a carrier-based variant. Thanks to its external hard-points and its internal bays the “Lightning II” is able to carry a wide variety of offensive weapons such as clusters bombs, laser-guided and GPS-guided bombs, air-to-surface missiles and anti-ship missiles.