F-35 Production, Testing And International Participation Ramp Up

Over the next calendar year, the F-35 Lighting II program will complete all remaining System Development and Demonstration aircraft, deliver the first production-model F-35s to the armed services and initiate full-scale flight test operations at Edwards Air Force Base, CA and Naval Air Station Patuxent River, MD.

At least, that's what Lockheed Martin asserts.

"2009 is shaping up to be a year of firsts for the F-35 program, with the first flight of our F-35C carrier variant, the first vertical landing of our F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing variant, the first stand-ups of our test sites as Edwards and Pax River, the first training aircraft delivered to the US Air Force and the first F-35 orders from our international partners," said Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and F-35 program general manager, speaking last week at the Air Force Association's 2009 Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, FL. "Already, we have delivered eight of 19 SDD jets, and we are moving aircraft off the assembly line at a rate of about one per month, a pace that continues to accelerate."

Additionally, the program will continue to validate the F-35's highly evolved mission systems software and hardware by adding to the more than 1,100 hours of flight testing and 115,000 hours of laboratory testing already completed. The initiation of flight testing for the first mission-systems-equipped F-35 will reinforce technical risk reduction efforts for the most powerful and comprehensive avionics system ever packaged into a fighter.

"As we mature the F-35, we continue to see evidence of ever-strengthening customer support -- in the US Air Force's request for stepped-up production, in the US Navy's call for reinstatement of three early-production F-35Cs, and in Norway's and the Netherlands' endorsement of the F-35 as their future fighter," Crowley said. "We will see more of the same in 2009, as we prove out the Lightning II's capabilities, and as our international partners begin ordering their first airplanes."

Three F-35 variants derived from a common design, developed together and using the same sustainment infrastructure worldwide, will replace at least 13 types of aircraft for 11 nations initially, making the Lightning II the most cost-effective fighter program in history.

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