It looks like the first quarter of 2011 was a good one for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter test program, with the plane logging 57 more test flights than the planned 142, even in the face of a fleet-wide grounding last month, according to Lockheed officials.Absolutely--Positively--Great News.
Interestingly, it was the Air Force’s F-35A conventional variant and the Marine Corps’ F-35B short take-off and vertical landing variant that did much of the heavy lifting in achieving the 199 test flights last quarter.
The F-35As flew 82 times against a plan of 62 flights while the F-35Bs flew 101 flights against a plan of 62 sorties. Heck, the embattled Bravo performed 61 vertical landings last quarter. Compare that to the 10 vertical landings it performed in all of 2010!
Meanwhile, the Navy’s F-35C carrier variant racked up only 16 out of 18 planned flights for the quarter, according to Lockheed. No information was provided as to why the Cs missed their targets.
Two production model F-35As also took to the skies for a total of seven flights in 2011.
All told, the F-35 now has 753 flights under its belt since 2006, according to Lockheed.
The critics are spinning and banging their heads.
APA is about to have a coronary.
I proudly say "I TOLD YA SO!"
I wonder if we'll here this news on Ares. As many F-35 threads as they have over there it seems puzzling that they always seem to miss the good stuff. ;-)
ReplyDeleteya know at first i was just thinking SFERRIN is just fired up when you first responded to my tongue in cheek title that stated 'news you won't hear on ARES' but something seems to have turned over there.
ReplyDeletei don't know if they've taken an editorial direction or what but they're moving toward the ANTI F-35 camp and its becoming more and more obvious.
surely Bill or Sean or Graham is just as aware of this as the guy from DoD Buzz but for all the articles they write this one never came up.
I didn't actually notice the Ares title. :-) I suspect that as the F-35 continues to prove itself Bill & Co. will start to look more and more like petulant children. Like Sprey and Riccioni who were once respected but now. . .well, almost pathetic.
ReplyDeleteHow goes software development?
ReplyDeleteif i told you it was going great and that they had over come the initial issues would that cause you joy or pain?
ReplyDeletebut to answer, it goes well...progress is being made and you'll see interesting news on it by summers end.
sorry Thomas, but as far as the F-35 is concerned...life is good.
oh and expect it to come off probation before the start of the next fiscal year.