Graff occasionally commented on news stories about the F-35 and also participated in internet forum discussions, always defending the new jet.

Graff did not respond to messages sent via email and Twitter. Villageous did not respond to email and phone messages. Santucci did not respond to an email to her personal account.

Was Graff a real person? Was he a product of a pro-F-35 P.R. campaign seeking to “amplify messages across online communities”? Lockheed declined to say whether it has had any interaction with Graff, but there is reason to believe he had special access to Lockheed data on the F-35.

In a post dated June 7, 2012—the same one Santucci linked to the following day—Graff laid out reams of detailed data purporting to prove that F-35 testing was ahead of schedule. (In reality, the overall program was years behind schedule, regardless of any short-term surge in test flights.)

What was suspicious was that the data possessed by Graff, who had appeared on the blogging scene out of nowhere just a month prior, had not appeared anywhere else online or in print: not in Wired, Flight, Aviation Week or the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, all of which had full or part-time reporters carefully tracking all F-35 developments.

Either newcomer Graff had scooped everyone, or he was somehow privy to Lockheed’s internal data. Almost as though he had been requested—as had Bunting and the New Jersey assembly—to portray the F-35 in the best possible light.

David Axe is defense editor of The National Interest. He is the author of the graphic novels War Fix, War Is Boring and Machete Squad.

Image: U.S. Military