First Public Appearance for Boeing JSF Mockup

While all eyes are focused on the first flight of Boeing's X-32A Joint Strike Fighter demonstrator later this summer (the mockup is on display here at Farnborough in its first-ever public appearance), there is far more to the program than the aircraft itself.

"Those who expect this to be a fly-off competition between us and Lockheed Martin couldn't be more wrong," Dennis Muilenburg, director of the Boeing JSF Weapon System, told Show News. Muilenburg is also co-holder of the patent on the Boeing Joint Strike Fighter design concept.

In this new digital era the aircraft is just part of the program, and most of its weapons and sensor systems are being developed and tested in the lab, in the simulator, and in flying testbeds such as Boeing's modified JSF 737-200 airliner.

"It is very important to understand the X designation of these aircraft-they are not prototypes of the JSF," said Muilenburg. "We are using them to reduce technology risk as opposed to demonstrating an operational version. So their objectives are precisely focused on a limited set of technology demonstrations."

They are:

• to prove 80% commonality between conventional and STOVL (short takeoff/vertical landing) variants;
• to demonstrate the approach handling qualities of the version destined for use on aircraft carriers; and
• to demonstrate the ability to hover and transition from conventional flight-which it's to do in less than three seconds.

The STOVL X-32B will fly before the end of the year.

In addition, Boeing used its advanced digital design and build techniques to demonstrate the affordability of the way it will produce the JSF.

So the X-32s will basically show they fly as Boeing said they would, and can be built as cheaply as claimed. Then their job is over. (Flyaway price is $28 million for the standard version, $30-35 million for the STOVL version, in 1994 dollars.)

The three essential elements to the JSF program are to build and fly the X-32s, develop the Preferred Weapons System Concept (PWSC), and then refine it to operational requirements. As part of this, 10 U.S. and RAF pilots recently flew the mission simulator on 100 sorties in real-threat electronic environments in a full-blown representation of what the aircraft, its sensors and systems can do on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, a full-scale X-32 mockup, indistinguishable from the flying demonstrators in materials and construction and lacking only elements of the propulsion system, has concluded electromagnetic "pole" tests to prove all its sensors and systems work together as planned in a working airframe. Much of the data collected here was used to refine the PWSC-which is also here on display at Farnborough.

Pilots recently flew the JSF full-mission simulator in Seattle in real-time cooperative training missions networked to F-15 operational training devices some 2,000 miles away at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The exercise, which will be repeated often as the PWSC is refined, demonstrated that Boeing's JSF can already fly and fight with other aircraft in a synthetic battlespace.
But Boeing has done even better than that.

In a recent milestone test, the JSF Flying Lab proved the ability of the JSF cockpit and avionics to operate live with other aircraft on the battlefield. Flying over the White Sands test range with an F-15 carrying a JDAM weapon ("and another test asset I can't describe for you that did some avionics targeting work," said Muilenburg), the Flying Lab grabbed the offboard targeting data, used its onboard sensors to refine it in what Boeing calls "sensor fusion," and beamed it to the F-15. The silent-running F-15, relying completely on the fused data sent to it by the "JSF," launched the JDAM and destroyed the truck they had set out to kill.

"It's a good demonstration of how we expect JSFs to be able to operate," said Muilenburg. "You can imagine flights of JSFs communicating with each other, with the ability to launch weapons while remaining completely passive-this is much stealthier and makes them much more survivable."