Israeli Air Force commander Amikam Norkin revealed on Tuesday that the F-35 fighter jet conducted airstrikes on at least two occasions, which he said made Israel the first country to use the stealth aircraft operationally.
“The Adir aircraft are already operational and flying missions. We are the first in the world to carry out operational strikes with the F-35,” Norkin told a conference of air force chiefs visiting Israel from around the world, using Israel’s name for the aircraft.
“The Israeli Air Force has twice carried out strikes with the F-35, on two different fronts,” he said.
Norkin did not specify when those two attacks took place.
Israel began receiving the fifth-generation stealth fighter from the United States in December 2016. The aircraft were declared operational approximately a year later.
Norkin revealed the F-35’s operational uses while showing the visiting air force officers a photograph of the stealth fighter jet flying over the Lebanese capital of Beirut, in what could be seen as a tacit threat to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group.
This would be at least the third time that Israel was the first country to use a new type of aircraft operationally.
In 1979, an Israeli fighter pilot, Moshe Marom-Melnik, was the first to use an F-15 jet to shoot down an enemy plane, a Syrian MiG-21.
Two years later, an Israeli pilot was the first to use the F-16 fighter jet to shoot down an enemy aircraft, a Syrian Mi-8 attack helicopter.