{"id":379855,"date":"2026-03-04T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/lightning-strikes-royal-air-force-f-35b-logs-first-combat-kill\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T09:00:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T23:00:17","slug":"lightning-strikes-royal-air-force-f-35b-logs-its-first-combat-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=379855","title":{"rendered":"Lightning Strikes: Royal Air Force F-35B Logs Its First Combat Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Royal Air Force has recorded a milestone for its F-35B Lightning II force. The <span class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\" data-id=\"204667\"style=\";  ;\" class=\"display-card-hyperlink display-card-hyperlink-no-vignette\"><a href=\"https:\/\/simpleflying.com\/tag\/united-kingdom\/\"  >United Kingdom<\/a><\/span> has confirmed that the stealth fighters have achieved their first operational combat kill by shooting down hostile uncrewed aerial systems over Jordanian airspace. The engagement was part of a wider defensive effort across the Middle East as Iranian drone and missile activity drives heightened alert levels for regional partners and deployed forces of all kinds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The incident occurred in Jordan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19759,396,748,411,423],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-379855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2026-iran-crisis","category-aircraft","category-f-35","category-royal-air-force","category-united-states"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=379855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379856,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379855\/revisions\/379856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=379855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=379855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=379855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}