AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE,
Singapore: New warplanes like the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will continue to play a crucial role in combat despite the emergence of unmanned drones, US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin said Tuesday.
The F-35 will undergo its first flight test between September and December this year, company officials said after announcing that the first F-35 has completed assembly and been moved out of the factory ahead of ground trials.
This follows Lockheed's F-22 Raptor, the other “fifth-generation” fighter in the company's stable, which entered US Air Force service in December 2005.
“These fighters bring a game-changing increase in capability, survivability and supportability over legacy fighters at a significantly lower cost and will transform defense worldwide,” said George Standridge, Lockheed vice president and deputy for business development.
“Lockheed Martin has launched the world into the fifth generation of military aviation,” he told a news briefing on the sidelines of Asian Aerospace, the world's third-largest airshow.
Standridge said the role of the F-35 to penetrate enemy air defences and demolish targets with precision-guided weapons has not diminished even with the increased emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Some analysts say the UAVs, or drones, can perform the same function. They have already been combat-tested in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Standridge, a former fighter pilot, said the UAVs have neither the F-35's survivability nor range of capabilities.
Compared with current generation aircraft, the F-35 has superiority in air-to-air engagement, air-to-ground missions against fixed and mobile targets as well as in intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance and suppression of enemy air defenses, he said.
The warplane is a joint project of nine countries — the United States, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Denmark and Norway.
It is scheduled to enter service by 2012, Lockheed Martin spokesman John A. Smith said.
The supersonic, multi-role fighter is designed to replace AV-8B Harriers, A-10s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and the United Kingdom's Harrier GR.7s and Sea Harriers, the manufacturer said.
For the F-22, which costs around 110 million dollars and offers air-to-air as well as air-to-ground combat capability, Smith said “there's a lot of interest.” Industry news reports say Japan is among the countries which have expressed interest in acquiring the fighter.
“We believe the F-22 and F-35 represent a major inflection point in military aviation and all aviation for that matter,” Standridge said.
Lockheed Martin remained the top US defense contractor in 2005. It had 19.4 billion dollars in deals with the Pentagon last year, officials have said.
The company, also the top contractor in 2004, edged out Boeing which had 18.3 billion dollars in Defense Department contracts last year, and Northrop Grumman, with 13.5 billion.
