Lockheed's Here to Tell World
About Its JSF Flight Milestones

A newly restructured Lockheed Martin Aeronautics weighs into Paris with a full-scale mock-up of its Joint Strike Fighter, an aircraft seen by many to represent the future of the company.

"We've got to have a significant portion of it," LMAero president Dain Hancock said on the eve of the show. "It is the future of the aeronautics part of Lockheed Martin."

"This is the first real international forum we've had to showcase what our demonstration aircraft have done," says JSF program VP Tom Burbage, noting that the aircraft's first flights have been made since last summer's Farnborough gathering. "It's an opportunity for the international community to get a good look at what our aircraft can do," Burbage says.

The Paris audience is a critically important one, he says, as ministerial and parliamentary level people attend the Le Bourget show. "A lot of countries are on the verge of making a decision to join JSF or go in other directions," he says.

It's important to companies on this side of the Atlantic too. Lockheed last month hosted a JSF suppliers conference involving BAE Systems and more than two dozen other UK firms, and says suppliers from Italy, the Netherlands and other countries will participate in the program as well. Along with BAE, Northrop Grumman is a Lockheed JSF program partner.

Lockheed is testing three versions of its X-35 JSF: the X-35A for the U.S. Air Force, the short-takeoff/vertical landing X-35B for the U.S. Marines and UK's Royal Air Force and Navy, and the larger-winged X-35C for the U.S. Navy.

Recent milestones include:

• completion of the X-35A flight-test program, including supersonic testing, this past November;
• completion of the X-35C flight-test program, including a 2,500-mile flight across the U.S. and 100 carrier landings, this past March; and
• installation of the shaft-driven STOVL lift fan in the X-35B and completion of hover pit testing with an eye to commence full flight testing this month.

Lockheed's competition for the Pentagon's JSF buy is Boeing, with the understanding that the contest is winner-take-all. It's also understood that the loser will likely end up as a subcontractor to the winner. "Whichever team wins has got some significant staffing challenges," Burbage observes.

A more fundamental question is whether the Pentagon can afford to purchase the JSF at the same time that it's buying F-22 Raptors and F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets. "The three airplanes are really quite different," Burbage says. Despite their high visibility, "They don't consume that large a percentage of the defense budget," he adds.

Other observers say that since the JSF is a make-or-break program for Lockheed, Lockheed will win because the U.S. government will not want to be left with only one domestic airframer.

Burbage dismisses that analysis out of hand. "We consider our advantage," he told Show News, "to be our airplane."