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US President Donald Trump has let rip on new details regarding the possible development of a twin-engine version of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
President Trump broadcast the surprising theory during a visit to the Middle East this week as he spoke in Qatar.
“We’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade, but we’re also doing an F-55, I’m going to call it an F-55, and that’s going to be a substantial upgrade, but it’s going to be also with two engines, because the F-35 has a single engine, I don’t like single engines,” he reportedly told media in Qatar.
“Then we’re going to do the F-22 ... It will be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet.”
The US government and US defence industrial base has stepped up engagement with Middle East partners this year.
Both the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have reportedly expressed intentions to bring their defence industry manufacturing back domestically before 2030 – and in contrast, have less reliance on US foreign military sales for their traditional military acquisitions.
Earlier this week, American defence prime Raytheon inaugurated a new advanced industrial facility at Tawazun Industrial Park in Abu Dhabi to support the UAE’s efforts in localising advanced defence manufacturing capability.
“We are excited to see the Raytheon facility at Tawazun Industrial Park come to life, advancing our partnership from plan to production, further contributing to the development of local capabilities and strengthening the UAE’s position as a hub for advanced defence technologies,” Raytheon Emirates managing director Fahad Al Mheiri said, speaking about the 21,500 square foot facility features dedicated space for the final integration, assembly and testing for the Coyote counter-unmanned aerial systems.
In regard to F-35 development, the Chinese copycat J-35A aircraft was recently announced as a direct “hostile stealth aircraft revealing” rival to the US’ F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.
Wang Yongqing, a J-35A chief researcher at Aviation Industry Corp of China’s Shenyang Aircraft Design and Research Institute, said the J-35A would become a backbone of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force and the military would rely on its ability to “reveal other stealth aircraft”.
“Our adversaries will definitely use their stealth aircraft or low-observable cruise missiles to penetrate our air defence networks,” Wang said to state-controlled media China Daily.
“And if those hostile craft succeed in infiltrating our defence lines, they will outperform our conventional countermeasures in terms of detection capability and range, which means they can spot us from hundreds of kilometres away but at the same time we can’t find them. That means our defence units will not be able to survive such an encounter.
“It (the J-35A) can lock on the targets, share the targets’ position with other weapon systems, such as surface-to-air missiles, and even use its own radar to guide other weapons to bring the targets down.
“This is called ’systems coordination’ or ’multi-domain coordination’.”
