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WASHINGTON: The costliest international warplane project, the F-35 Lightning 2 Joint Strike Fighter, safely completed its first test flight on Friday, advancing a $276.5 billion program financed by the United States and eight other countries.
The test flight achieved most of its goals, but an air data probe used to sense speed and altitude flashed a warning that killed plans to raise the landing gear, officials of Lockheed Martin Corp. said. Lockheed is developing three models of the radar-evading, multi-role fighter jet.
The flight over Fort Worth, Texas, lasted 38 minutes — about two-thirds the 60 minutes or so the Pentagon's program office had projected earlier this month.
“We completed the majority of our flight test objectives,” Dan Crowley, Lockheed's F-35 program general manager, said in a conference call with reporters. He said he was confident that raising the landing gear would have gone well had it been tried.
Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier, called the inaugural flight successful and said it kicked off the most comprehensive flight test program in military aviation history.
The United States' partners in the aircraft are Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway. Singapore and Israel are also involved but have not yet committed funds.
The hallmark of the program is affordability. Current procurement projections are the basis for the F-35's estimated average unit cost of $45 million in 2002 dollars for the conventional model, to $60 million for one designed to land on aircraft carriers.
Lockheed's top F-35 subcontractors are Northrop Grumman Corp. and BAE Systems Plc . Two separate, interchangeable F-35 engines are under development – one built by United Technologies Corp.'s Pratt & Whitney unit, the other by a team of General Electric Co. and Rolls-Royce Plc.
“The Lightning II performed beautifully,” F-35 Chief Pilot Jon Beesley said after the flight. “What a great start for the flight-test program.” He said “hopefully” the next test flight would take place in a few days.
The jet climbed to 15,000 feet. Beesley performed a series of maneuvers to test aircraft handling and the operation of the engine and subsystems, Lockheed said. Two F-16s and an F/A-18 served as escorts, it added in a statement.
The single-seat, single-engine F-35 is designed to replace a wide range of aging aircraft, including A-10s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and British-built Harrier jump-jets.
The program is due to start initial low-rate production next year, but U.S. congressional investigators have said testing will have been inadequate at that point.
The first F-35 to fly was a conventional takeoff and landing model. Also being developed are a vertical takeoff and landing version and another designed to land on carriers.
The Pentagon plans to buy 2,443 F-35s by 2027 for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
Britain and the other partners are also expected to buy by 2014, bringing the consortium's combined total projected purchases to more than 3,100 aircraft, the No. 2 official in the Pentagon's program office, Marine Brig. Gen. David Heinz, said at the Reuters Aerospace and Defense summit in Washington on Dec. 5.
As early as 2010, the Pentagon expects to define an F-35 configuration for sale to even more countries through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program.
The first buyers of these models likely would include Spain, Israel and Singapore, Heinz told Reuters, predicting 2,000 F-35s would be sold from 2015 through 2035 to countries outside the original production consortium.
Lockheed beat out Boeing Co. in 2001 to develop the F-35 after a five-year competition during which each built prototypes.
