Although it's an achievement to get the first short take-off, vertical landing (STOVL) JSF, F-35 BF-1, in the air on the schedule agreed in August 2006, it will be late in the year before it even starts to do anything that the first airplane, AA-1, hasn't done.
Program officals speaking after BF-1's first flight today said that while the jet may perform some "up and away conversions" later this year, the build-down to jet-borne flight won't start until the first quarter of 2009. That will be followed by 20 sorties at Fort Worth in which the jet progressively slows down, leading to a slow landing. BF-1 will then be ferried to the Navy's flight-test center at Patuxent River for the final tests leading to a vertical landing.
The timescale for that process is not certain, but there's certain to be an interval between each of the build-down flights, followed by some time to wrap up BF-1 flight operations at Fort Worth and stand up the test team at Pax. With the best will in the world, a vertical landing doesn't look likely until well into the second quarter.
Oddly, that's not what Lockheed Martin CEO Bob Stevens told an analyst conference on May 29. Asked about STOVL flight tests of the JSF, Stevens said: "Watch this space. We are committed to flying the STOVL mission by the end of this year and we will be scored as to whether we do or don't do it."
I'm just happy that I'm not the guy who briefed the CEO for that meeting.
