Posted on 07/17/2010 2:44:07 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
Extending development by three years on two F-35 variants would not be enough to keep the restructured programme on track.
But Lockheed Martin's flight-test programme gained significant new resources to reduce the risk of further delays in the overall restructuring announced on 1 February.
Namely, the US Department of Defense will buy another flight-test aircraft in the fourth lot of low-rate initial production (LRIP). The US Marine Corps and US Navy also would "loan" three operational aircraft to Lockheed to participate in the flight-test programme. Doug Pearson, Lockheed vice-president for the F-35's integrated test force, explains how the new resources will be employed, starting with the fifth instrumented carrier variant.
The latest version of the flight-test schedule - internally named V16 - raised concerns because flight sciences testing for the carrier variant "stuck out to the right six months or so", Pearson says. He asked for approval to add one more aircraft - dubbed CF-5 - for delivery in 2012. Lockheed Martin's 600-strong integrated test force is divided into two groups at Edwards AFB, California and NAS Patuxent River, Maryland.
With four aircraft deployed to Patuxent River as of late June, Lockheed's integrated flight-test team numbers about 340. Another roughly 250 employees are based at Edwards AFB.
The numbers will continue growing as all 14 flight-test aircraft arrive by the end of the year. Lockheed adds 20-50 new staff members as a new aircraft arrives at each location, although the average number declines as more aircraft are added.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
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Those are the pictures taken when AF1 and AF2 were delivered to Edwards.
Just some useless trivia...
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I would rather fly the F-35 than the F-22 and I wish they had developed the YF-23 rather than the F-22. And one of my college mates was a design engineer on the F-22.
There I said it (its sacrilege on the FR).
The Raptor is a good fighter, but the JSF is a crap white elephant program. When Ike was saying “military industrial complex”, he had stuff like the F-35 in mind.
The YF-23 was an amazing aircraft, and it would have been interesting to see how it would have turned out. I’ve read several instances of people in the know saying that Lockheed was picked more for political and budget reasons than of which aircraft was best.
The Raptor is a good fighter, but the JSF is a crap white elephant program. When Ike was saying “military industrial complex”, he had stuff like the F-35 in mind.
The YF-23 was an amazing aircraft, and it would have been interesting to see how it would have turned out. I’ve read several instances of people in the know saying that Lockheed was picked more for political and budget reasons than of which aircraft was best.
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