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US Navy has received first stealth fighter F-35C Lightning II carrier variant, from Lockheed Martin, the company announced on Tuesday. The aircraft departed from NAS Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base and arrived at Naval Air Station (NAS) Patuxent River, Maryland on Saturday at 04.31 pm GMT. The aircraft has achieved successful air refuels at a maximum load of 19,800 pounds during the flight. The F-35C will conduct air-to-air refueling and performance tests at Patuxent River. The F-35 Lightning II is a 5th generation fighter aircraft, combining advanced stealth with fighter speed and agility, fully fused sensor information, network-enabled operations, advanced...

When the Pentagon released its latest cost estimates for the tri-service F-35 joint strike fighter program, many outsiders were aghast at the projected price-tag for the planes. Everyone knew it was the defense department's biggest development program, but the per-plane costs were a good deal higher than most people were expecting. Now Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Business News is reporting that acquisition costs could go even higher due to development delays -- only a few months after policymakers restructured the program, supposedly to put it on a more predictable, executable path. So this program must be really fouled up, right?...

As a mid-sized power, Australia should buy its jet fighters off the shelf. Not for the first time, the Joint Strike Fighter is making headlines for all of the wrong reasons - cost and schedule overruns and cancelled orders. This is not good news when the aircraft is the planned future of Australia's air combat force. The Australian government was an enthusiastic backer of this aircraft right from the start. Advertisement: Story continues below In 2002 it cancelled a study that was looking at a range of fighter and strike aircraft and instead signed up to the JSF program not...

Japan eyes procuring F-35 fighters; gives up on more F-2 jets Monday 08th November, 07:54 AM JST TOKYO — The Defense Ministry has set its sights on procuring the F-35 fighter as Japan’s main next-generation fighter aircraft for the Air Self-Defense Force, giving up on an earlier plan to buy more F-2 fighters, ministry and Self-Defense Forces sources said Sunday. The ministry plans to seek procurement costs for the F-35 in its budget request for fiscal 2012 and is slated to begin full-fledged arrangements for the procurement plan early next year through a selection committee to prepare for the budget...

In light of delays with the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, the U.S. Air Force is set to begin looking at which of its newer F-16s will receive structural refurbishments, avionics updates, sensor upgrades or all three, the service’s top requirements officer said today. The service has already begun discussing “how to move the old [tactical fighter] fleet to the right” to keep them flying until the JSF comes online, Lt. Gen. Philip Breedlove, chief of Air Force operations, plans and requirements, told reporters today at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “We’re not going to do a blanket upgrade,”...

Good progress is being made in flight testing by the CTOL and CV versions. F-35B STOVL mode flights have resumed, but the variant is still behind schedule. However, it is neither the CTOL nor the CV model that holds the current speed and g-load records for the F-35. That honor befalls the F-35B STOVL. Recently the jet accomplished Mach 1.32 and 7 g's, the maximum g's the STOVL is designed for.

You read the story back in September, that Northrop Grumman's AAQ-47 distributed aperture system (DAS) for the F-35 tracked SpaceX's first Falcon 9 booster launch during a test flight on the company's BAC One-Eleven testbed. The feat was hailed as showing the 360-deg, multi-camera IR sensor's potential for use in missile defense. Now you can judge for yourself, as Northrop has released video from the June flight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZrvAFRhQZc The blurb with the release says: "The video generated by DAS during the flight test has been magnified 10 times to allow clearer viewing of the rocket. Unlike other sensors, DAS detects...

Reported 3-year delay in F-35 program may impact delivery By YAAKOV KATZ 11/03/2010 04:52 Less than a month after Israel signs contact to purchase squadron of stealth F-35 fighter jet, an internal review may affect delivery to the IAF. Less than a month after Israel signed a multibillion-dollar contract to purchase a squadron of stealth F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (JSF), the Pentagon revealed on Tuesday that an internal review of the development program had concluded that delivery of the plane would be delayed by three years. On Tuesday, the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board submitted a report to Secretary of Defense...

Lockheed Martin is looking at revamping several of the F-22's most critical systems with hardware from the F-35. The initiative would create a common architecture that links upgrades of the radar, electronic warfare suite and communications, navigation and identification (CNI) system to both aircraft. The concept requires "significant initial investment", but "could yield some cost savings in the long term", the manufacturer says. Lockheed developed the F-22 about a decade ahead of the F-35. Both aircraft share the company's "fifth-generation fighter" slogan, but major subsystems are based on different architectures. So improving hardware or software on the F-35 yields no...

Defense Secretary Robert Gates will reportedly be told in a Tuesday meeting that the Joint Strike Fighter program will need $2.5 to $5 billion more than currently budgeted and also faces significant schedule delays. The meeting is to discuss the Technical Baseline Review, which will feed into the November 22 Defense Acquisition Board meeting. THe TBR covers the current SDD phase of the largest conventional defense acquisition program in U.S. history. The preliminary information about the meeting comes from Winslow Wheeler, a longtime congressional defense budget expert now with the Center for Defense Information. Wheeler would only say that his...

BAE Systems has formally opened a new state-of-the-art titanium machining facility at its Samlesbury site in Lancashire. The robotic facility will be used to manufacture detail and assembly components of the Aft Fuselage, Vertical Tail and Horizontal Tail for the F-35 Lightning II combat aircraft, further reinforcing BAE Systems’ key role in the world’s largest defence programme. From the first sod being cut in May 2009, the 9000 metre square machining facility has taken just ten months to complete and a further eight months to become operational. It comprises two computerised Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) which not only manage the...

Deep cuts to defence spending announced this week by Britain may mean Australia's plans to spend billions of dollars on high-tech fighter aircraft will be even more expensive. The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, said this week that the austerity cuts would include slashing the number of Joint Strike Fighters to be bought from the US. He did not specify how many of the fighters would be cut from the original commitment of 138, but experts have predicted Britain could end up buying as few as 40, or even 12. Mr Cameron said the British government had also scrapped plans...

MPs from across the political spectrum want to reduce the number of JSF fighter jets the Netherlands is planning to buy to below the 85 on the provisional order books, the Telegraaf reports on Monday. The need to make government spending cuts and the rising cost of the aircraft are forcing a rethink, the paper says. Labour, the Socialists, left-wing greens GroenLinks and anti-Islam PVV all want the total number reduced or the order scrapped altogether, while the Christian Democrats say the figure of 85 is no longer set in stone. The Liberal democratic party D66 also says it would...

Following the Strategic Defence and Security Review, the government has confirmed it will build both Queen Elizabeth class carriers but the first will carry no planes and be removed from active service after three years once the second is completed. The second carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, will be redesigned to enable it to take the conventional Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) planes currently being built by the US, rather than the more advanced and more expensive variant the previous government had planned to buy The first carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will be completed in 2016 but will only carry helicopters...

As pressure rises for the US to abandon overseas bases crucial to the U.S. ability to reach deep into China, Russia and other strategic locations, the service is growing increasingly hungry to buy a basket of long range strike capabilities. Air Force officials say it would probably be a mix of platforms — manned and unmanned — and some of them will almost certainly be stealthy and they will boast a range of at least 1,800 miles. And they will be expensive. Why do the Air Force and so many estimable defense analysts believe the U.S must build a replacement...

Given the global buzz around the Indian Air Force’s (IAF’s) ongoing $10-billion procurement of 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA), my suggestion to scrap the process and, instead, go in for a straight buy of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightening II fighters is admittedly radical. But consider this: when the F-35 enters service, a couple of years from now, it will comfortably outclass every one of the six fighters that the IAF is currently evaluating. Thereafter, through the entire 30-40 year service life of the selected MMRCA, the IAF will fly a second-rung fighter when it could have gotten the best....

Deputy defense minister Andrew Yang says Taiwan is interested in buying F-35 fighter jets in the future. Those jets are more advanced than the F-16C/Ds which Taiwan has requested to purchase from the United States. Yang's comments came in an interview with the Washington Times, which was published on Thursday. Yang said that right now Taiwan has about 90 F-5s but the aging fleet is urgently in need of replacement. Yang also said Taiwan needs newer models of the F-16A/B fighter jets that it currently owns. He said that's to cope with growing missile and aircraft threats from China. Yang...

Britain's aircraft carriers will be left without planes for a period because of cuts to the military budget in next week's spending review, Defence Secretary Liam Fox has confirmed. Two former heads of the Royal Navy have warned that a decision to withdraw Harrier jets before the arrival of new Joint Strike Fighter F35s in 2018 would leave Britain unable to fight another Falklands War. Dr Fox confirmed that there will be a "gap" between the phasing out of the Harriers and the US-built F35s coming into service, but insisted that this will not put the Falklands at risk. Britain...

UK Defense Review - Harriers Out, Tornado Survives? Posted by Bill Sweetman at 10/18/2010 1:00 AM CDT UK Prime Minister David Cameron is due to announce the results of the nation's strategic defense and security review on Tuesday afternoon. After performing twists and gyrations that would have put Strictly Come Dancing's Flexible Felicity to shame, much of the media had settled last week on a common narrative. Either it's right or the Ministry of Defence's department of obfuscation will pull down the OBEs and MBEs big-time in the next honours list. If the speculation and leaks are correct, these are...

The signature on the final agreement between the US and Israel for the supply of a first batch of F-35A LIGTHNING II fighter aircraft (a.k.a. JSF) would seem to mark a very important turning point in the political, strategic and military relationship between the two countries. The reasons for this author’s use of a cautious conditional tense will become evident in what follows. Needless to say, there never was any real doubt about the US being ready and willing to accept an IDF order for the F-35 as soon as Jerusalem was interested in placing it. Now, in this specific...