By Geoff Fein
Lockheed Martin [LMT] yesterday put its F-35B short take off vertical landing Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) into the air for the first time, marking the beginning of months of deliveries and flight tests of the next-generation Marine Corps fighter.
BAE Systems test pilot Graham Tomlinson flew BF-1 for 44 minutes, reaching speeds up to 230 knots, he told reporters yesterday.
“Any first flight on a new airplane you are really trying to prove from the moment you take off that the airplane is safe and suitable for landing,” he said.
During the 44-minute flight, Tomlinson took BF-1 to 15,000 feet with the gear down. That altitude was chosen as a safe height to start exercising the throttle and check out the engine, he said. “We exercised the throttle to make sure the engine responded as we expected it to do, and it did.”
After that, Tomlinson spent the remainder of the first flight flying at slower speeds, checking flight qualities…the feel of the aircraft to make sure it flies nicely, he said.
“On the way back, we did a little bit of formation flying. The reason we did that was when you are in close formation with another airplane, in this case an F-18, then you get a bit more active,” Tomlinson said.
Having a target to fly against is good for sampling the controls and the engine response, Tomlinson said. “Making sure it still responds nicely to a higher gain environment, because when you get to the final landing and the ground rushes up to meet you, then you tend to be putting in those slightly higher gain control inputs in the final phase of a landing.”
At no time during Wednesday’s flight did Tomlinson test the STOVL system that enables the F-35B to take off and land vertically.
“STOVL has always been planned for later in the program,” Tomlinson said. “We have to make sure the airplane is mature in terms of flight controls, engines, all subsystems, in the conventional mode and then we will start making the equally small incremental steps to get into the STOVL envelope and expand that envelope.”
A recent Acquisition Decision Memorandum signed by Pentagon acquisition chief John Young, indicated that completion of first flight was the key milestone in terms of the award of the contract, Brig Gen. David Heinz, deputy executive director JSF program, told reporters.
“This combined with a briefing to AT&L on the STOVL engine constitutes my ability to award the approximately $1.3 billion.”
These funds will cover six aircraft, all the spares and everything else associated with Low Rate Initial Production II STOVL aircraft, Heinz added.
“I anticipate [contract award] to be as soon as possible. [My] brief to Mr. Young will be the key driving factor now,” Heinz said.
Lockheed Martin will conduct a second flight of BF-1 on Monday, Doug Pearson, vice president F-35 Integrated Test Force, said.
The company will conduct the first STOVL tests in the January-March 2009 time frame, he added. Those tests will be conducted at Lockheed Martin’s Ft. Worth, Texas, facility.
“When we’ve convinced ourselves the aircraft is ready, [we’ll] take it to (Naval Air Station) Pax River (Maryland) and continue work there,” Pearson said. “We’ll end up doing the first STOVL full landing from a hover at Pax River.”
This fall Lockheed Martin intends to do the initial “up and away” conversion work where they will actually open the STOVL doors in flight, Pearson said. That work will begin prior to the first full STOVL test flight early next year.
“This is the beginning of flight test program for the STOVL airplane,” Pearson said. “It’s a continuation of the conventional program we started with AA-1, our first F-35 flying aircraft. That aircraft should be starting up engines momentarily and will be flying, unrelated to this mission…it will fly a separate test sorties later [Wednesday] today.”
Later this month AA-1 will fly out to Edwards AFB, Calif., to begin two to four weeks of testing, he added.
Currently in its Ft. Worth factory, Lockheed Martin has all of the remaining 17 System Development and Demonstration aircraft as well as the first two LRIP jets in production, Dan Crowley, executive vice president and F-35 program general manager, said.
“This year we’ve already delivered the first static test article for STOVL, BG-1. The next flight aircraft to leave the factory is called BF-2. It will leave in the July time frame and fly in January of 2009,” he said. “We will complete this year the first ground test article for the optimized CTOL (Conventional Take Off and Landing) in the December time frame, and we’ll roll out BF-3 and BF-4 for the STOVL variant and fly in the second quarter time frame of next year.”
By the end of 2009, Lockheed Martin will have delivered and flown all of the 18 aircraft, 12 of which are fliers and six ground test vehicles, Crowley noted. “So 2009 is a big year for us.”