On Dec. 17, 2024, the official X account of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II (not to be confused with the F-35 JPO [Joint Program Office] account) announced that they had delivered the 100th F-35C carrier-based strike fighter. The date of the delivery or details about the aircraft have not been disclosed.

According to F-16.net, which maintains a database of all F-16s, F-22s and F-35s, a total of 111 F-35s should have been delivered as of Dec. 2024. This could also confirm the manufacturer’s statement in the press release that “more than 100 F-35Cs have already been delivered.”

The aircraft CF-100, with the Navy serial 170543, was photographed during a test flight at Forth Worth, Texas, on Nov. 16, so its delivery might have happened within the last month. Although that’s officially the 100th F-35C built, they are not always delivered in the same order of manufacture, so the 100th to be delivered might be another aircraft. Also, the first production aircraft to be delivered to the Navy was CF-6.

This year has also marked many more milestones for the F-35C. Just two months ago, the U.S. Navy’s third F-35C squadron, the Sidewinders of Strike Fighter Squadron 86 (VFA-86) received their SFFOC (Safe For Flight Operations Certification). More recently, F-35Cs with the Black Knights of VMFA-314 returned from their deployment in the middle east with bomb markings after they conducted strikes in Yemen. This marked the combat debut of the F-35C.

As the F-35C is a CATOBAR carrier-specific variant of the F-35, currently the United States is the only country that operates this variant of the aircraft. However, both the Navy and Marine Corps have the aircraft in their inventory. The Navy is the larger operator and plans to operate 273 units of the F-35Cs to complement the older generation F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and replace the legacy F/A-18C/Ds.

Currently, the Navy operates four squadrons of the F-35C: the Sidewinders of VFA-86, the Warhawks of VFA-97, the Argonauts of VFA-147, and the VFA-125 Rough Raiders. Notably, as an FRS (Fleet Replacement Squadron), VFA-125 provides training for both Navy and Marine pilots transitioning to the F-35C.

The Marine Corps, which primarily operates the STOVL F-35B model, also has three Marine Strike Fighter Squadrons (VMFA) operating the F-35C. These are the VMFA-251 Thunderbolts, VMFA-311 Tomcats and VMFA-314 Black Knights. VMFA-314 was the first Marine Corps squadron to transition to the F-35C in 2020, seven years after the Navy received its first one in 2013.

The F-35 has currently four variants: the CTOL (Conventional Take Off and Landing) F-35A, the STOVL (Short Take Off and Vertical Landing) F-35B, the CATOBAR (Catapult Assisted Take Off But Arrested Recovery) F-35C and the Israeli-specific CTOL F-35I. The program celebrated its 1000th airframe being built back in Jan. 2024, although the delivery happened months later after the Tech Refresh 3 delays.

The F-35C is a carrier-based variant designed for CATOBAR operations from the U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. It first flew in 2010 and achieved IOC (Initial Operational Capability) in 2019. Compared to the CTOL F-35A and STOVL F-35B, the naval F-35C features larger wings with foldable wingtip sections, larger control surfaces for improved low-speed control, stronger landing gear for the stresses of carrier arrested landings, a twin-wheel nose gear, and a considerably stronger tailhook for use with carrier arrestor cables.

The larger wing area allows for decreased landing speed while increasing both range and payload, which are crucial in carrier operations where the landing speed needs to be significantly slower than land-based systems because of the short runway. Due to the extra weight brought on by these features, the F-35C has also a lower G tolerance of 7.5G, compared to the A model’s 9G.

As the only stealthy multirole fighter on a carrier in service anywhere in the world, the F-35C will be crucial in future wars, being able to penetrate airspace where highly sophisticated air defenses would not allow the employment of traditional non-stealth aircraft.