By Mona Moore, Daily News
FORT WORTH, TEXAS -Lockheed Martin's F-35 production is on schedule and nearing its goal of a 2010 delivery to Eglin Air Force Base.
Last month, the makers of the new Joint Strike Fighter rolled out two more F-35s that are now ready to be tested.
"AF-1 is a flight-test aircraft and AG-1 is a ground-test aircraft. AF-1 will be dedicated to validating the F-35's aerodynamic capabilities in flight," John R. Kent, acting manager of F-35 Lightning II Communications at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., wrote in an e-mail.
"AG-1 will not fly, but will be used to validate the F-35's structural integrity in a fixture that bends and twists the airplane beyond its design limits," according to Kent.
Six F-35s are now complete and 17 are in production.
"The six completed aircraft include AG-1 and AF-1, and all of them are undergoing tests," Kent wrote.
The test aircrafts have completed 83 flights.
"Thirteen of the 17 aircraft in production are preproduction test aircraft, and all of those will be finished in 2009," according to Kent. "The other four are the first production-model planes, and the first of those will be delivered in 2010 to the U.S. Air Force, and will go to Eglin."
The Air Force has ordered more than 1,700 F-35As. Called AF-1, it is structurally identical to the F-35B that will be flown by the Navy. Both aircraft will fly in the Joint Training School at Eglin.
By 2015, the school will house 72 of the conventional takeoff and landing variant, 20 F-35B short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) variants and 15 carrier variants (CV).
The F-35 is a supersonic, multi-role, fifth-generation stealth fighter. It will replace at least 13 types of aircraft for 11 nations.
Because three variants, or types of F-35s, were created from one common design, developed together and will use the same infrastructure, the Joint Strike Fighter stands to be the most cost-effective fighter program in history. The Department of Defense has estimated support costs will be about half that of present-day fighters, and streamlined assembly methods will cut production time.
The common design will allow Lockheed to produce the aircraft using an assembly line production, a new feat for fifth-generation stealth aircraft. The AF-1 is the first produced, completed on the company's moving assembly line at its full rate of production. It is the first aircraft since World War II to use a moving assembly line at Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth, Texas, factory.
"Because many airplanes will be built concurrently, we will deliver about one aircraft per working day during full-rate production," according to Kent.
The F-35 will become the workhorse of the Air Force fleet. Like the AF-1, most of Eglin's jets will be conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) fighters.
"The Lightning II CTOL aircraft will be, by far, the most widely employed F-35 variant in the world," Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and F-35 program general manager, said in a press release. "The F-35A we delivered is, at its core, the same aircraft that will enter operational service with the Air Force and international customers."
The latest Lightning II is one of only four aircraft with the latest weight specifications. Three weight-optimized F-35Bs are being tested. The first F-35A, known as AA-1, has completed 69 flights, but its internal structure was designed before a 2004 weight-savings program revised all three F-35 variants.
"AF-1 incorporates many evolutionary improvements and updates that have resulted from our AA-1 flight test program over the last two years," said Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin executive vice president and general manager of F-35 Program Integration.
"Right now, it takes about a year and a half to build an F-35. That will continue to drop to about 6 months when production is going full blast," according to Kent.
Lockheed Martin's second F-35 Lightning II ground-test aircraft also rolled out this month. The new F-35, called AG-1, is the full-scale static test article for the CTOL variant, which will be flown by the U.S. Air Force and eight of the nine F-35 partner countries. The static test aircraft for the STOVL variant was delivered earlier this year and has successfully completed a third of its planned test program in Fort Worth.
"AG-1 will be placed in a state-of-the-art test rig where twisting, bending and pulling forces are applied to validate that the CTOL variant's structure can sustain the tremendous forces and loads exerted during flight," Crowley said in the press release. "This test article enables F-35 to retire technical risk as quickly as possible so flight testing can progress toward the CTOL's full nine-G performance envelope on schedule."
In late March, AG-1 will be shipped to the BAE Systems Structures Laboratory in Brough, England. Arrival is expected in late April. Upon the completion of the full-scale static testing program, AG-1 will be shipped back to the United States.