Fifty-two of the Air Force’s F-35A II Lightning fighters took a little walk Tuesday.
An “elephant walk” that is.
The fighters are part of the Active Duty 388th and Reserve 419th Fighter Wings at Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah.
"Today's exercise marks the accomplishment of over four years of work — a little over four years ago, we received our first F-35," 388th Wing Vice Commander Col. Michael Ebne told the Deseret News. "We now have our full complement of aircraft and locally, we turn this into a goal of full war-fighting capability."
The term “elephant walk” refers to the close formation of military aircraft before they take off.
According to a tweet from the base, the exercise was planned for months and demonstrated the ability “to employ a large force of F-35As – testing readiness in the areas of personnel accountability, aircraft generation, ground operations, flight operations, and combat capability against air and ground targets.”
The demonstration took place hours before Iran launched missiles at American and coalition forces in Erbil, Kurdistan, Al Assad Air Base, Iraq, and another base located in Jordan.
A squadron from Hill is currently deployed in the Middle East.
Iraqi bases housing US troops struck with Iranian ballistic missiles
No casualties in Iran missile attacks, preliminary reports say