The stealthy F-35 jet may not complete its most critical stage of combat testing until about September 2022, the latest in a series of delays that has set America’s most expensive weapons program back by years, Pentagon officials were told last month.
The rigorous testing in the $398 billion program that was once planned for 2017 was most recently scheduled for December. But the Defense Department’s F-35 program office has now projected the target date for the monthlong simulator testing as August 2022, according to a briefing chart used in a mid-March review.
