News

Early reports show that the Air Force's next generation close-air support aircraft has a weight problem. Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James G. Roche told members of the Senate Committee on Appropriations subcommittee on defense the issue was predictable.

A senior Air Force official told lawmakers March 25 that the service would not be interested in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter if a technical glitch could not be overcome or if program funds were cut off.

Singapore, which plans to upgrade its air force, signed an agreement to become the first Asian participant in Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, with an option to buy the planes starting in 2012.

Melbourne-based Adacel Technologies will supply speech recognition software systems for the $US200bn global Joint Strike Fighter program.

The Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter team successfully launched the first phase of the F-35 Electro-Optical Distributed Aperture System (EO DAS) early risk-reduction flight-test program, with recently conducted flights near Patuxent River Naval Air Warfare Center in Maryland.

HBM, Inc., a leading global supplier of measurement technologies, products and solutions for industrial test and measurement applications, has been awarded an $8.7 million dollar contract to provide data acquisition hardware and software for structural tests on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.

Paul Bevilaqua, chief engineer of Advanced Development Projects at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., has received Design News magazine's Engineer of the Year award, the publication's highest honor.

Israel signed a letter of agreement, worth almost $20 million, to formally join the system development and demonstration (SDD) effort for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program as a "security cooperation participant" (SCP).

The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team is undergoing a series of design, test and manufacturing milestones this year in preparation for initial full-engine tests for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program in 2004.

As Patuxent River Naval Air Station awaits the arrival of the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter later in the decade, a replica of the supersonic jet's forerunner has arrived at the historic base.

Pre-system development demonstration (SDD).

The GE/Rolls-Royce F136 engine team for the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter Program (JSF) will undergo a series of rig and subsystems tests this year and in 2003 in preparation for the first full-engine tests in 2004.

Turkey today (July 11) became the seventh international partner to sign up for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, joining the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark and Norway. Australia also has announced its intention to participate.

Under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) recently signed by GE and FiatAvio, FiatAvio has joined the GE/Rolls-Royce JSF-F136 team, responsible for design, development, and manufacture of structural components for the low-pressure turbine.

Denmark today officially became the third international participant in the Joint Strike Fighter program, joining the United Kingdom and Canada in the stealthy aircraft's decade-long development phase.