F-35 Lightning II News

April 21, 2007 (by Lieven Dewitte) - The U.S. Defense Department said Thursday it would start buying Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter production models, thus officially putting the $275 billion, multi-nation aircraft program into low-rate production (LRP).
The Defense Department's chief weapons buyer, Kenneth Krieg, said he had approved the release of full funding for two conventional F-35 aircraft (LRIP 1), plus "long lead" funding for 12 planes to be built in a second batch (LRIP 2).

Until now, the F-35s being built have been prototypes and test planes. The decision to start production followed a top-level April 11 Pentagon program review.

The first two planes Lockheed Martin builds with the funds will be conventional take-off and landing (CTOL). Of the following 12, half will be CTOL and half will be short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variants.

Lockheed has already delivered one test aircraft, a COTL plane, and 10 more are in production. The next plane to be delivered will be a STOVL version.

"I think it is important to note that unlike other legacy programs, the F-35 test jets are being built using virtually the same tooling as the production jets, so by the time we deliver the two LRIP 1 jets we will have already delivered fourteen jets to our test force," said Air Force Brig. Gen. C.R. Davis, the Pentagon's F-35 program executive.