F-35 Graphics & Artwork

Electrical power was applied for the first time to the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II on Thursday night, thus initiating a series of ground tests that will lead to the inaugural flight of the short-takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth fighter next spring in 2008.

Test flight delays due to engine problems could further inflate the cost of the F-35 Lightning II, already the most expensive military program ever at $299 billion.

Lockheed Martin has completed the first F-35 Lightning II equipped with mission systems, a milestone that will lead to the first avionics testing on board an F-35 aircraft.

British Defense Secretary John Hutton announced on Wednesday that the United Kingdom will purchase three Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II operational test aircraft.

The House Armed Services Air and Land Forces Sub-committee has delivered a blow to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) business plan.

Will a successful development of the F-35B short take-off and landing (STOVL) Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) variant force small aircraft carriers on the U.S. Navy? This is a fair question with a debtor U.S. federal budget in turmoil from the global economic meltdown.

The U.K. has decided to sacrifice one of its two new aircraft carriers F-35 flight capability due to that bleeding ulcer called a defence budget.

Update 2 --- BF-1, the first production representative short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has arrived at Naval Air Station Patuxent River Maryland. Source: Graham Warwick of Aviation Week via Twitter. The plan is to start 30 days of testing to build down toward the first vertical landing.

Criticising the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program isn’t especially useful if the people doing it are just flat wrong in their assumptions. Take for instance an article penned by Winslow T. Wheeler and Pierre M. Sprey in the  The Huffington Post called, “A Tale of Two Pigs”.