Production activity for Lockheed Martin’s JSF F-35 Lightning II is entering the start of an intense phase that will dominate the scene for the next 18 months.

Post its maiden flight on December 15, 2006, development of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has shifted to top gear. As of now, production activity for Lockheed Martin’s JSF F-35 Lightning II is entering an intense phase spanning across the next 18 months. The successful flight debut on June 11 of the first Short Take-off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) version airframe, christened BF-1, albeit in conventional mode, justified the programme’s ability to make good its promises to religiously adhere to declared time schedules. The effort now would be to focus on preparing the BF-1 for its first flight in STOVL mode planned for early 2009.

Under a third revised production schedule unveiled in May, Lockheed’s final assembly and check-out facility in Fort Worth, Texas, is committed to deliver new prototype airframes at the rate of one completed aircraft a month for the next 17 months. Throughout this period, Lockheed will also be conducting a rigorous flight-test assessment of the conventional and STOVL variants, as well as starting the same phase for the carrier variant (CV), assembly of which had commenced on October 18, 2007 by BAE Systems at its Samlesbury facility in UK.

To recap (see cover story Lightning Pace in SP’s Aviation 04/08), the F-35 programme started as an attempt to develop and produce an affordable, joint-service multi-role fighter with a high degree of commonality and low life-cycle costs to replace existing aircraft in the US and British armed forces. It later expanded to include Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark and Canada. The fighter has been offered by the US as a natural corollary if India selects the F-16 in its drive to acquire 126 Medium Multi-role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA), or even outside its purview.