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Lockheed Martin has held a ceremony at its Fort Worth plant on Friday to mark the completion of production of the 100th F-35 Lightning.
The milestone aircraft, F-35A AF-41, was presented to around 2,000 guests and Lockheed Martin staff at the end of a ceremony designed to highlight the program’s growing momentum.
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“The 100th F-35 symbolises the maturation of the F-35 program by the collective government and industry partner team as we prepare to ramp up production,” said Lorraine Martin, Lockheed Martin F-35 program general manager. “This is a proud day for the entire F-35 community.”
The milestone 100th aircraft was also significant in being the first aircraft due to be delivered to Luke Air Force Base Arizona. Luke will be the US Air Force’s main F-35 pilot training base, while a number of international F-35 customers will train their F-35 pilots at Luke, including, initially, Australia.
Of the 100 F-35s built to date 44 are F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) jets, 42 F-35B STOVL variants, and 14 F-35C carrier (CV) variants. Of those 88 are flying, and three have been delivered to the UK and two to the Netherlands. A further 90 are in various stages of construction.
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John N
says:100 down and 3,000 to go!
Another good step forward for the F-35, the program certainly seems to have settled down in the last year or so, yes there is still a way to go with testing and software loads, etc, but all appears to be heading in the right direction.
Apart from the announcement recently that South Korea is planning an initial order for 40 aircraft, there were a couple of other bits of F-35 news over the last few days too, Norway has authorised the funding of it’s next batch of F-35A’s, and there are also reports that Japan is looking to add another 28 F-35A’s to the 42 already on order.
Hopefully by the next Budget (in May 2014), we should see some news from the Government when the next batch of 12 will be ordered for the RAAF and hopefully a timetable for the next batch of 58 to be ordered too.