New super plane facts and figures

The supersonic F-35B Lightning II is the cutting-edge aircraft which will carry out missions and operations from land and the Royal Navy’s Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers.

Here are some of the facts and figures behind the warplanes which are due to start arriving in the UK next month.

The jet measures 51.2ft (15.6m) in overall length, has a wingspan of 35ft (10.7m) and a height of 14.3ft (4.36m).

It has a top speed of 1.6 Mach or 1,200 mph, a Max G rating of 7G, and a combat radius of 518 miles (833km).

Lockheed Martin, the American company building the jet, describes its stealth capabilities as “unprecedented”. Its airframe design, advanced materials and other features make it “virtually undetectable to enemy radar”.

Britain has committed to a £9.1 billion programme to buy 48 of the jets by 2025 – with a pledge to purchase 138 – they will be jointly operated by Royal Air Force and Royal Navy pilots.

The F-35B jets are built from more than 300,000 individual parts.

The UK’s supersonic aircraft have been based in the US since their manufacture.

There are six distributed aperture system sensors around the jet – two underneath, two on top of the aircraft and one either side of the nose. These infrared cameras feed real-time information and images into the pilot’s helmet, allowing them to see through the airframe.

All variants of the jets are mainly constructed on Lockheed Martin’s mile-long production line in Fort Worth, Texas.

It takes 58,000 man hours to build each F-35B.

The F-35 can launch from land, and will take off from HMS Queen Elizabeth via the skip jump ramp, which has been designed to optimise the launch, for the first time later this year.

Maximum thrust tops 40,000lb and the jet has a range of 900 nautical miles. The jet is capable of two types of ship landing – vertically on to the deck and also through the shipborne rolling vertical landing.