F-35’s Maiden Flight

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) made its maiden voyage Dec. 15 in Fort Worth, Tex. The 35-minute test flight ushered in what Lockheed Martin is calling the most comprehensive flight test program in military aviation history. The F-35 is designed to replace a wide range of existing aircraft, including AV-8B Harriers, A-10s, F-16s, F/A-18 Hornets and United Kingdom Harrier GR.7s and Sea Harriers. The United States and eight other countries are financing the $276.5 billion program, the most expensive international warplane project. Initial production will begin in 2007, followed by full-rate production in 2013. Among suppliers, Smiths Aerospace is providing systems including electrical power management system, distributed computing and data management, actuation systems and components in the propulsion system. The systems provided by Smiths are valued between $6 billion to $7 billion over the lifetime of the aircraft. Also, Smiths Interconnect was selected to provide broadband cable assemblies with a total contract value of $500 million over the life of the program. In October, Green Hills Software was selected to provide its Integrity-178B real-time operating system (RTOS) for the system processor of the F-35 Lightning II panoramic cockpit display. The display provider is L-3 Communications. More