Israel’s Defense Ministry and military have said that Israel would be very soon procuring a third squadron of 25 advanced F-35 stealth fighter jets from the United States. The additional 25 aircraft would bring the Israeli Air Force’s F-35 fleet to 75 in the coming years. The ministry said it would issue an official letter of request (LOR) to the US military’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office. The deal is estimated to be at 3 billion dollars, financed by US military aid to Israel. Israel will be the second country after the United States to receive the F-35 from the aircraft manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, and one of the few to be allowed to modify this state-of-the-art aircraft. Israel had previously agreed to purchase 50 F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin. They are being delivered in batches of twos and threes until 2024. The IAF’s first two F-35 jets arrived in December 2016. Approximately a year later, the stealth fighter - known in Israel as the Adir - was declared operational, and several months after that, the head of the air force had revealed that the aircraft had conducted bombing raids, making Israel the first country to acknowledge using the planes operationally.

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