How Many F-35s Does Israel Have? The F-35I Adir Fleet in 2026

Israel has 48 F-35s in service, all of them the F-35I Adir, its version of the conventional-takeoff F-35A. The Times of Israel put the fleet at 48 jets from an initial order of 50 on May 3, and no delivery has been announced since the three that arrived in January.

Israel signed for the jet in October 2010, the first country to buy it through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales system. Lockheed Martin handed over the first Adir on June 22, 2016 in Fort Worth, Texas, the first two reached Israel that December, and the air force declared the jet operational in December 2017. Deliveries have since come in small batches of two or three, usually announced by the IDF on the day they land.

The last two jets of the first 50 were due in 2025 but slipped. The Jerusalem Post reported on May 3 that they are expected later in 2026. Once they arrive, Israel will have 50.

Israel will have 75 F-35s by the early to mid-2030s under contracts already signed, and 100 if the fourth squadron it approved in May is bought.

The next 25 jets come from an agreement the Israeli Ministry of Defense announced on June 4, 2024. It is worth about $3 billion, paid for with U.S. Foreign Military Financing, and deliveries start in 2028 at three to five jets a year. At that pace the last of them would arrive between 2032 and 2036.

On May 3, 2026, a committee of senior ministers approved a fourth F-35I squadron alongside a second squadron of Boeing F-15IA fighters. The Times of Israel counted a squadron as 25 jets, which gives the 100-jet target. The ministry gave no price beyond “tens of billions of shekels”, and its director general told its U.S. mission to finalize the agreements. No signed contract for that fourth squadron had been announced as of late October, so the 100 figure remains a plan, not an order.

All of Israel’s F-35s fly from Nevatim Air Base in the Negev desert, in three squadrons.

The 140th “Golden Eagle” Squadron formed in 2016 and received the first jets. The 116th “Lions of the South” Squadron became operational in 2020. The 117th Squadron, dedicated in July 2021 and focused on training pilots, took the name of the unit that led the 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor. The three jets that landed in January joined the 116th and 140th. The Defense Ministry calls the 25 jets ordered in 2024 the “third squadron” of Adirs, even though the 117th already exists as a training unit.

The F-35I is an F-35A with Israeli systems added on top, not a different aircraft. Lockheed Martin said it changed the jet for Israel in three areas: command, control, communications, computers and intelligence (C4I), electronic warfare, and weapons integration, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported.

Washington would not let Israel rewrite the jet’s internal software, so the two sides agreed that Israel could add its own systems over the existing ones. Israel Aerospace Industries built a command-and-control layer that its manager compared to an app running on a phone. The jet carries Israeli radios so it can talk to the air force’s F-15s and F-16s, and it is cleared for Israeli weapons, including Rafael’s Python 5 air-to-air missile and SPICE guided bombs, Defense News reported. Maintenance differs too: Israel planned to service its jets at Nevatim rather than at a regional center shared with other buyers, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported in 2017.

Whether that makes the Adir better than an American F-35A cannot be shown from open sources. Nor is the Adir named as part of Israel’s nuclear force: our explainer on Israel’s nuclear weapons lists its F-15 and F-16I jets, not the F-35, among the likely delivery systems.

Israel was the first country to fly the F-35 in combat, and its F-35s have the type’s first air-to-air kills.

On May 22, 2018, air force chief Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin said the jet had struck twice on two different fronts, the first combat use by any country. In March 2021 Adir jets shot down two Iranian drones heading for Israel, which the air force disclosed a year later as the first F-35 air-to-air kills. On March 4, 2026, during the war with Iran, an Adir downed an Iranian Yak-130 over Tehran. The IDF called it the first F-35 kill of a crewed aircraft and Israel’s first downing of an enemy warplane since 1985.

The air force has not said how many F-35s took part in the strikes on Iran. Our reporting on how many missiles Iran has left covers what those strikes were meant to destroy.

The United States has the most F-35s by far, and Japan has the largest order outside it.

The Pentagon plans to buy about 2,456 F-35s across the three variants, according to the Congressional Research Service, and in October agreed a framework for up to 850 more. Japan plans 147, 105 F-35As and 42 short-takeoff F-35Bs, which made it the biggest international buyer when it approved them in December 2018. Israel’s 48 is a much smaller fleet, but it was the first to take the jet to war and the first to shoot down aircraft with it.

Israel had 48 F-35I Adir jets as of January 18, 2026. Israel signed for the F-35 in October 2010 and later grew that first order to 50 jets. The first Adir was handed over on June 22, 2016, and the type became operational in Israel in December 2017. A further 25 jets, worth about $3 billion, are due from 2028 at three to five a year, for a fleet of 75. Israeli ministers approved a fourth F-35 squadron on May 3, 2026, setting a target of 100 jets. All Israeli F-35s are based at Nevatim, in the 116th, 117th and 140th squadrons. On March 4, 2026, an F-35I shot down an Iranian Yak-130, the first F-35 kill of a crewed aircraft.