F-35 program set for takeoff in Texas
The skies around Fort Worth will soon be filled with the new fighter jets, and the plant building them is in the midst of a $1.2 billion upgrade.
An F-35 taxis out of a hangar at the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics plant and proceeds to the edge of a runway, the view of the Fort Worth skyline shimmering in front of it.
A smaller sleek F-16, acting as a chase plane, pulls up behind the F-35 and follows the futuristic stealth fighter as it prepares to take off on another test flight.
Soon the two Lockheed Martin jets take off in a loud roar, quickly becoming small specks in the sky.
Over the next few years, the skies around Fort Worth will be filled with even more F-35s on shakedown flights as the Lockheed Martin plant moves toward full production of what, at $391.1 billion, is called the most expensive U.S. weapons system ever made.
The plant has been building 30 to 40 airplanes a year, but that number is expected to triple by 2017 and hit almost 200 by the end of the decade, military and company officials said.
To get ready, the Fort Worth plant is in the midst of a $1.2 billion upgrade — its biggest since the F-16 was developed in the 1970s — to support the production schedule.
“We have lots of construction (underway),” said Lorraine Martin, Lockheed’s general manager for the F-35 program. “We’re building more structures on the flight line, more run stations, more engine run locations, the ability to have more aircraft in our paint shop.”
The expansion will roughly double the number of workers on the production line in west Fort Worth, with more likely in other areas to support the increased activity. Currently, Lockheed Martin employs about 13,000 people in Fort Worth, 8,800 of them assigned to the F-35 program.
After more than a decade of development, and many stumbles and setbacks, the F-35 appears to have finally arrived.
The program started in 2001 when Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing in a competition to produce the joint strike fighter. Lockheed teamed with Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems on the project.
The United States and eight other countries created a global partnership to build and develop the F-35. Japan, Israel and South Korea are also foreign military customers.
Since the F-35 was envisioned as a replacement for several military aircraft — the AV-8B Harrier, the F/A-18 Hornet, the EQ-6B Prowler, the F-16 and the A-10 — Lockheed was tasked with building three versions of the aircraft, each with unique characteristics.
The F-35B, for the Marines, is designed for short takeoffs and vertical landings. The F-35A, a shade lighter and sleeker, is being built for the Air Force. The F-35C, with its bigger wings and tail span, is being built for Navy carrier landings.
Lockheed is scheduled to build 3,170 F-35s, with the program ending in 2039. But company officials, particularly with the involvement of its foreign partners, say that number could grow.