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Dan Crowley, Lockheed Martin executive vice
president and F-35 program general manager commented on the
rescheduled program for the upcoming weeks. “For the F-35,
those tests include refueling from an airborne tanker in the
short term and supersonic flights next year. At the same time,
we are putting the finishing touches on our first short takeoff/vertical
landing F-35 aircraft, which will roll out of the factory this
month and initiate flight testing in the spring."
"By the end of 2008, we expect to have at least three
F-35s in the air and numerous aircraft on the assembly line.”
said Crowley. Shortly after the JSF landed, the Cooperative
Avionics Test Bed – “CATBird” – took
off on a two-hour functional check flight, one of its final
sorties before aerial F-35 mission-systems testing begins. CATBird
is a highly modified 737 airliner designed to test, integrate
and validate the full F-35 mission systems suite in a dynamic,
airborne environment before the system ever flies in an F-35
aircraft.
The F-35 mission systems suite is already operating in ground-based
laboratories, and individual components like the AESA radar,
EOTS and EO-DAS already are undergoing preliminary airborne
testing in aircraft other than the CATBird. After test flying
the F-35's Communication-Navigation-Identification system on
the CATBIRD, the system will be flown and evaluated within the
F-35's avionics package. The first mission-systems equipped
F-35 will fly in 2009.
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