By Jasper Craven Feb 16, 2020 On Jan. 5, Col. David Shevchik Jr. took command of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing. A native Vermonter, Shevchik replaced Col. David Smith, who retired after more than 30 years in the organization. Shevchik was born in Springfield and grew up in Essex. He graduated from […]
By Sean Kennedy March 2, 2020 Members of Congress have done their utmost to ignore the mounting problems in Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II program. In the fiscal 2019 Department of Defense Operational Test and Evaluation Annual Report, released to the public Jan. 30, it was revealed that testers consider the “accuracy of the gun, as […]
By: Aidan Quigley for VTDigger, Nov. 11, 2019 South Burlington officials are worried their city might have to foot some of the bill for noise mitigation after the arrival of the F-35s, reviving a decades-long debate about airport governance. While the Federal Aviation Administration is funding 90% of the noise mitigation programs, the funding source for […]
By: Dylan Brogan for Isthmus, Nov. 7, 2019 On this October afternoon, Carmine Sargent’s living room is as bright as the autumn leaves falling in South Burlington, Vermont. Sargent introduces “the folks from Madison” to nine of her neighbors. Wisconsin Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison) and Madison Ald. Rebecca Kemble are here on a fact-finding mission with […]
By: Dan Grazier for POGO, Nov. 1, 2019 Pentagon leaders are likely reveling in the news that they have negotiated an agreement with Lockheed Martin that they claim drives down the unit cost of the F-35 joint strike fighter to below $80 million in the next few years. While any reduction in costs for the most expensive […]
By: Joel Banner Baird for the Burlington Free Press, Oct. 27, 2019 SOUTH BURLINGTON – Ear-plugs? Heavier curtains in the living room? How about a moving van? No easy fix for noise accompanied the arrival last month of Vermont Air National Guard’s first two F-35 fighter jets. Nor did a consensus over the planes’ roar. Still, efforts are underway […]
By: Aidan Quigley for VTDigger, Oct. 1, 2019 WINOOSKI — The F-35 jets housed at the Vermont National Guard took off and landed Tuesday, in a first training run. One jet took off around 9 a.m. and landed around 10:15 a.m. during an overcast day in the Burlington area, and a second flight took off […]
By: the Associated Press; published by NBC5, Oct. 1, 2019 SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. — The U.S. Air Force has rejected a request for an updated assessment of the potential noise effects of the F-35 fighter jets’ use of afterburners during takeoff in Vermont. Assistant Secretary of the Air Force John W. Henderson denied the request […]
By: Sebasitan Sprenger, Sept. 29, 2019 COLOGNE, Germany — In the illustrious history of the F-35 fighter jet, add a pony farm outside Berlin as the place where one company claims the plane’s stealth cover was blown. The story that follows is a snapshot in the cat-and-mouse game between combat aircraft — designed to be […]
By: Oriana Pawlyk for Military.com, Sept. 27, 2019 The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will not complete its already-delayed formal operational test phase this fall because of a setback in the testing process, according to a source close to the program. While the F-35 Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) was supposed to be complete by late summer, a source […]