Recently in Joint Strike Fighter Category

US Marine Corps Col Arthur Tomassetti, 33^rd Fighter Wing vice-commander, had his first local area F-35B flight scrubbed yesterday due to weather. Today, however, the weather was good and he managed to log 1.5 hours on the jet--which returned home with zero discrepancies.

USAF Photo by Major Karen Roganov--these are from yesterday's attempt...

Most of the flight was out over the Gulf of Mexico and consisted of basic aircraft handling maneuvers such as turns, climbs, descents. But Tomassetti also did some formation flying with the two Boeing F/A-18s that are visiting from Marine Corps Reserve Squadron VMFA-112 based at Fort Worth, Texas. Returning to base, he did some touch and goes around the Eglin pattern.

As Tomassetti describes it, flying at Eglin without having to hit specific test points is far less stressful than a full-up test sortie would be at NAS Patuxent River or Edwards AFB.

Tomassetti says: "The difference between flying test flights in a test aircraft and flying the F-35B in Eglin airspace is not being under the continuous pressure of a test flight following very specific procedures. Today I really had the luxury of exploring the aircraft at my own pace, getting comfortable flying it around, and operating the displays. I was able to focus on what I wanted to focus on and my first time flying in the Eglin airspace.

I continue to be impressed how easy it is to fly the F-35 and how well it performs. For the last two years I only flew in the back seat of the F-16s at Eglin. Today's flight is one of the first steps in building VMFAT-501's capability to train F-35 pilots. I was happy to be able to contribute to that effort."

Maintainers are also impressed with how well the F-35 doing given its immaturity. Right now, Eglin relies upon contractor maintenance support, but military crews are learning fast how to take care of the new jets.  

"We were able to incorporate Lockheed Martin Contracted Logistics Support procedures accomplished with the Air Force F-35A to streamline operations for the first week of flying the F-35B variant," says USMC Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Smith, a VMFAT-501 maintainer.  "So we were scheduled to fly three days and the F-35B flew all three days on our first week of flying operations."

F-35 pilots from the initial cadre at Eglin AFB, Florida, have started their transition to the new aircraft. Initially, the 33^rd Fighter Wing had two test pilots who were putting the jet through its paces.

Recently, however, US Marine Corps Col Arthur Tomassetti, the unit's vice commander, has gotten checked out in the F-35 at the Navy's Pax River test facility. He was scheduled to fly his first local sortie today in an F-35B, but was forced to postpone due to deteriorating weather. He'll be giving it another shot in the morning.

Read the full story here

Tomassetti, as some of you might recall, was one of the original X-35 concept demonstrator test pilots. So he's seen the program right from day one basically.

But 33^rd FW is working on getting its first non-test pilot checked out on the F-35. Lt Col Lee Kloos, the commander of the 58^th Fighter Squadron, should be finished his six-ride transition course in the next week or two.

The veteran F-16 operational tester and Weapons School grad shared some of his impressions the F-35. The jet is powerful, stable and easy to fly.

"One of the things this aircraft usually takes hit on is the handling because it's not an F-22," Kloos says. "An F-22 is unique in its ability to maneuver and we'll never be that."

But compared to other aircraft, a combat-configured F-35 probably edges out other existing designs carrying a similar load-out. "When I'm downrange in Badguyland that's the configuration I need to have confidence in maneuvering, and that's where I think the F-35 starts to edge out an aircraft like the F-16," Kloos says.

A combat-configured F-16 is encumbered with weapons, external fuel tanks, and electronic countermeasures pods that sap the jet's performance. "You put all that on, I'll take the F-35 as far as handling characteristic and performance, that's not to mention the tactical capabilities and advancements in stealth," he says. "It's of course way beyond what the F-16 has currently."

The F-35's acceleration is "very comparable" to a Block 50 F-16. "Again, if you cleaned off an F-16 and wanted to turn and maintain Gs and [turn] rates, then I think a clean F-16 would certainly outperform a loaded F-35," Kloos says. "But if you compared them at combat loadings, the F-35 I think would probably outperform it."

The F-16, Kloos says, is a very capable aircraft in a within visual range engagement--especially in the lightly loaded air-to-air configuration used during training sorties at home station. "It's really good at performing in that kind of configuration," Kloos says. "But that's not a configuration that I've ever--I've been in a lot of different deployments--and those are the configurations I've never been in with weapons onboard."

Meanwhile, the F-35A continues to increase its sortie generation rate with another two-turn-two launch at Eglin earlier today. The second F-35A flight was cut somewhat short due to the same weather pattern that scrubbed Tomassetti's flight.

The US Air Force's 33^rd Fighter Wing and US Marine Corps flew their first Lockheed Martin F-35B local area flight at Eglin AFB, Florida, earlier today (22 May). But while today was the STOVL model's day, the wing's F-35A fleet is performing very well, a senior USAF official says.

The F-35A had already flown 47 sorties to date, but today they added to that total.

The unit "launched a two turn two of F-35As, another first," the senior official says. That makes "for a total of five sorties flown today."

I was hoping to find video footage of the flight but instead I found this clip from this Perpar3D simulation software.  Those are some very nice renderings. I'm sure it's great for training, but it would also make for an awesome video game.

Lockheed says that fixes to the problems with the F-35's helmet will be tested later this summer. If those modifications work as planned, it will put to an end a number of vexing problems that have hounded the program since pilots started flying the jet.

The company has also redesigned the carrier-version's tail-hook--that fix will enter into its preliminary design review next month. The redesign still has to prove itself, but so far things look good.

Flight sciences testing is also proceeding well this year...  the team is about 20% ahead of schedule.

This might be a sign that the program has turned the corner...

Read the full article here

The US Air Force's 33^rd Wing stationed at Eglin AFB, Florida, received its 12^th F-35 yesterday, 15 May. The aircraft was a US Marine Corps short take-off vertical landing (STOVL) variant jet assigned to VMFA-501.

USMC test pilot Lt Col Fred Schenk ferried the jet, BF-11, from Lockheed's Fort Worth, Texas, facility on a 90-minute flight.

F-35B local area flights should start at the base any day now; pilots have started taxiing the aircraft this Monday, 14 May.

Meanwhile, earlier today Air Force Chief Gen Norton Schwartz said that the F-35B can't generate the sorties it needs to replace the A-10--the USAF will stick with a pure F-35A fleet. The USAF had considered adopting the F-35B to replace the A-10 at one time.

The Marines, of course, dispute Schwartz's comments.

Schwartz also doesn't think unmanned aircraft will replace manned fighters anytime soon.

Read the article here.

Later in the evening, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta paid tribute to Marine Corps aviation during a ceremony at the Marine Corps War Memorial--sometimes referred to as the Iwo Jima Memorial. He strongly endorsed the USMC's need for a fifth-generation fighter in the form of the F-35B and also the MV-22.

The political dogfight over the cost of Canada's proposed purchase of 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighters continues unabated in that nation's capital.

The Canadian Auditor General Michael Ferguson disputed the assertions of Department of National Defence (DND) officials that they aren't required to count the full life-cycle costs of aircraft like the F-35 of 15 May.

"I am concerned with suggestions that accurate estimation and the inclusion of personnel, operating and maintenance costs are not important, since they would be incurred regardless of the aircraft selected to replace the CF-18," Ferguson told the Canadian parliament's public accounts committee.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, life-cycle cost are required by the DND's own internal polices and also by Canada's Treasury Board, which is responsible for setting those standards.

Earlier, Robert Fonberg, Canada' deputy minister of defence, told parliament that the DND normally only includes the purchase price and sustainment costs. The DND doesn't normally count operating costs because those are included in annual budgets. The F-35s is being bought the same way as four previous RCAF equipment purchases, he says.

Ferguson's report showed that internal DND estimates peg the cost of Canada's future F-35 fleet at $25 billion over 20 years, but those estimates weren't shared publically.

Fonberg told Parliament that there were two estimates as described in Ferguson's report.  According to the CBC, one column in a chart shows DND's internal estimate in 2010 for the F-35s as $25 billion over 20 years, and the second column shows its public response to a report that says the total estimate in 2011 was $14.7 billion.

Canadian parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page offers another estimate that suggests that the total cost of 65 F-35s might be as high as $29 billion over 30 years.

The CBC has more here and here.

US Marine Corps aviators Major Joseph "OD" Bachmann and Lt Col  Matt "Squirt" Kelly flew a pair of Lockheed Martin F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) production jets to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. The aircraft were the 9^th and 10^th B-model jets built for the USMC.

Lockheed Martin photo by Fred Clingerman, Jr

At Eglin, the two aircraft will serve with VMFA-501, which resides with the US Air Force's 33d Fighter Wing, where they will be used for pilot and maintainer training. VMFA-501's parent unit is the 2^nd Marine Air Wing.

One other STOVL jet, BF-11, was formally accepted by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) 5 May. That jet will fly to Eglin soon.

Meanwhile, the Marines at Eglin could start local area flights as early as tomorrow, 11 May.

Chris Kubasik will be anointed as Lockheed Martin's new CEO come 1 January 2013, but current CEO Bob Stevens will stay on as chairman of the board for another year until 1 January 2014. Kubasik is currently the chief operating officer and president of the massive defense giant.

Here is a video of the F-35C flying in formation. Sorry, there is no version without the music:

Greetings from Phoenix, Arizona, minions...

In my long absence from our nation's capital, much has happened (or not). Lockheed Martin has been awarded two additional F-35 contracts.

The contracts are respectively $68.3 million and $45.9 million modifications to the previously awarded Low Rate Initial Production II and III contracts for changes to the F-35's configuration. These changes could include modifications to the baseline hardware or software resulting from F-35 developmental test flight efforts.

According to a Pentagon release, these modifications define "the contractor's responsibility to incorporate government-authorized changes for the U.S. Air Force conventional take-off and landing and the U.S. Marine Corps short take-off vertical landing aircraft and provides funding for such efforts."

In the meantime, Lockheed has released another photo of an F-35 at Edwards refueling from a KC-10 while carrying external stores. They were testing the jet's handling in that configuration.

Enjoy.

Lockheed Martin has released these two images of the Navy's F-35C variant flying in formation at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. I personally find the CV aircraft to be the best looking of the three versions--but that's partly because it looks more the like an F-22 than the others.

Enjoy.