First F-35A “Adir” for Israel Taking Shape in Fort Worth
The aircraft, designated as F-35A aircraft AS-1, officially began its mate process, where the four major components of the 5th Generation fighter aircraft are joined together in the Electronic Mate and Assembly Station to form the aircraft’s structure. AS-1 will continue its assembly here and is expected to roll out of the factory in June and be delivered to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) later this year.
The multinational pilot training center at Luke AFB in Arizona has grown exponentially since receiving its first Lockheed Martin F-35 in March 2014, and that pace won’t let up in 2016 as the 56th Fighter Wing zips past 3,000 Lightning II sorties.
In an interview today, wing commander Brig Gen Scott Pleus says Luke AFB now counts 34 pooled fifth-generation F-35As in American, Australian andNorwegian livery. The wing also continues to produce 95% of the US air force’s F-16 pilots from the base in Phoenix and its two satellite squadrons at Holloman AFB in New Mexico.
As the world’s premier conventional F-35 training base, Luke is currently training pilots and instructors for the USA, Australia, Norway, Italy – and soon F-35 foreign military sales customers Japan and Israel. Other programme partners – the Netherlands, Turkey and possibly Denmark and Canada – will also join the pooling arrangement, where they share aircraft and instructors.
Luke will grow to six F-35 training squadrons, and will soon reactivate its third unit – the 63rd Fighter Squadron, which trained F-16C/D pilots until it disbanded in 2009.
As its former commander, Pleus is looking forward to the 63rd's return, and he expects one squadron to covert to F-35 each year after that. Eventually, Luke will house 144 jets and 12 full-mission simulators. Singapore and Taiwan also have F-16 training squadrons at the base.
Pleus flew the base’s first F-35 sortie on March 18, 2015, and by the end of the month, it had clocked 1,000 sorties. Luke recently surpassed 3,000 sorties.
Luke’s training programme will grow rapidly through 2024 as F-35 nations work towards initial operational capability. Lockheed is scaling up aircraft production at its main site in Fort Worth, Texas as well as in Italy and Japan, with a planned run of 2,322 A-models.
“Throughout this year, I’ll get two more Norwegian F-35s, our very first two Italian F-35s, and six more F-35s with US flags on the tail,” explains Pleus. “We’ll be sitting somewhere around 44 jets by the end of 2016. We’re also going to start training Israel with some ground-based training, and Japan will come in later as our [foreign military sales customer].”
FMS customers including South Korea will fly their own jets, and have instructors assigned to their units. The first Israeli F-35I “Adir” is in final assembly, but flight training is being done in Israel.
“Right now, Israel is just doing academic and simulator training only. Japan will bring their own aircraft here, and will go through the academics, the simulators and we will have instructor pilots assigned to them.”
One of the lingering curses of concurrent development and fielding of the F-35 is that the 34 aircraft based at Luke are in various stages of upgrade, and will be continuously improved as new hardware and software modifications become available. That means maintainers are working overtime to bring the aircraft and simulators up the latest configuration.
That should smooth out as Lockheed enters full-rate production in the standardised Block 3F and Block 4 configurations in 2017 and beyond.
Until recently, Luke has been growing its pilot instructor base, but in April students will adopt a new syllabus focused on full combat training, and eventually weapons employment.
That new focus comes as Hill AFB in Utah stands up its first combat-coded F-35 squadron for IOC in August, and as Luke prepares to receive its first undergraduate pilots in November.
Those basic course, or “B-course,” pilots will have limited exposure to combat jets, having operated the T-6, T-38 and AT-38 prior to taking control of a $100 million F-35. Until then, pilots have come across from older airframes like the A-10, F-16 and F-15.
“We are on the cutting edge in November of getting that first group of students started, so they can go right to Hill AFB upon their graduation and become the new pilots, instructors and leaders for the F-35 as it continues to grow,” says Pleus.
The multinational pilot training center at Luke AFB in Arizona has grown exponentially since receiving its first Lockheed Martin F-35 in March 2014, and that pace won’t let up in 2016 as the 56th Fighter Wing zips past 3,000 Lightning II sorties.
In an interview today, wing commander Brig Gen Scott Pleus says Luke AFB now counts 34 pooled fifth-generation F-35As in American, Australian andNorwegian livery. The wing also continues to produce 95% of the US air force’s F-16 pilots from the base in Phoenix and its two satellite squadrons at Holloman AFB in New Mexico.
As the world’s premier conventional F-35 training base, Luke is currently training pilots and instructors for the USA, Australia, Norway, Italy – and soon F-35 foreign military sales customers Japan and Israel. Other programme partners – the Netherlands, Turkey and possibly Denmark and Canada – will also join the pooling arrangement, where they share aircraft and instructors.
Luke will grow to six F-35 training squadrons, and will soon reactivate its third unit – the 63rd Fighter Squadron, which trained F-16C/D pilots until it disbanded in 2009.
As its former commander, Pleus is looking forward to the 63rd's return, and he expects one squadron to covert to F-35 each year after that. Eventually, Luke will house 144 jets and 12 full-mission simulators. Singapore and Taiwan also have F-16 training squadrons at the base.
Pleus flew the base’s first F-35 sortie on March 18, 2015, and by the end of the month, it had clocked 1,000 sorties. Luke recently surpassed 3,000 sorties.
Luke’s training programme will grow rapidly through 2024 as F-35 nations work towards initial operational capability. Lockheed is scaling up aircraft production at its main site in Fort Worth, Texas as well as in Italy and Japan, with a planned run of 2,322 A-models.
“Throughout this year, I’ll get two more Norwegian F-35s, our very first two Italian F-35s, and six more F-35s with US flags on the tail,” explains Pleus. “We’ll be sitting somewhere around 44 jets by the end of 2016. We’re also going to start training Israel with some ground-based training, and Japan will come in later as our [foreign military sales customer].”
FMS customers including South Korea will fly their own jets, and have instructors assigned to their units. The first Israeli F-35I “Adir” is in final assembly, but flight training is being done in Israel.
“Right now, Israel is just doing academic and simulator training only. Japan will bring their own aircraft here, and will go through the academics, the simulators and we will have instructor pilots assigned to them.”
One of the lingering curses of concurrent development and fielding of the F-35 is that the 34 aircraft based at Luke are in various stages of upgrade, and will be continuously improved as new hardware and software modifications become available. That means maintainers are working overtime to bring the aircraft and simulators up the latest configuration.
That should smooth out as Lockheed enters full-rate production in the standardised Block 3F and Block 4 configurations in 2017 and beyond.
Until recently, Luke has been growing its pilot instructor base, but in April students will adopt a new syllabus focused on full combat training, and eventually weapons employment.
That new focus comes as Hill AFB in Utah stands up its first combat-coded F-35 squadron for IOC in August, and as Luke prepares to receive its first undergraduate pilots in November.
Those basic course, or “B-course,” pilots will have limited exposure to combat jets, having operated the T-6, T-38 and AT-38 prior to taking control of a $100 million F-35. Until then, pilots have come across from older airframes like the A-10, F-16 and F-15.
“We are on the cutting edge in November of getting that first group of students started, so they can go right to Hill AFB upon their graduation and become the new pilots, instructors and leaders for the F-35 as it continues to grow,” says Pleus.
Fleet-wide F-35 fix targets fuel tank over-pressurisation
14 January, 2016
The concurrency curse has struck the Lockheed Martin F-35 again, this time during lightning protection qualification,
when it was discovered the jet’s fuel tanks could over-pressurise “beyond design limits” in certain flight profiles.
With 154 aircraft delivered to date, and another year of testing remaining, the concurrent development and fielding of aircraft has dogged the F-35 programme since its inception, with major discoveries often leading to delays and expensive fixes or workarounds.
The “low-risk potential” that air in the fuel system could over-pressurise an F-35’s fuel tanks, was identified in late 2014 during lightning protection qualification,
and was confirmed again in follow-on tests last year, a spokesman for the Joint Programme Office (JPO) tells Flightglobal.
The design flaw impacts all three F-35 variants operated by the US service and international buyers, and led to “precautionary flight limits” into 2015.
Last December, the programme successfully flight-tested new pressure relief valves that would remove those flight restrictions.
Modification work is to begin immediately on 41 A-model aircraft, under a $28.8 million contract with Lockheed announced on 12 January.
The deal includes conventional take-off and landing aircraft already delivered to Australia, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway.
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AFNS) -- An F-35 fighter jet from the 461st Flight Test Squadron launched an AIM-9X missile for the first time over the Pacific Sea Test Range Jan. 12.
The flight sciences aircraft, AF-1, of the Joint Strike Fighter Integrated Test Force, was piloted by David Nelson, the Lockheed Martin chief F-35 test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base.
The AIM-9X is an advanced infrared missile and the newest of the Sidewinder family of short-range air-to-air missiles carried on a wide range of fighter jets.
"The first Israeli F-35I “Adir” is in final assembly, but flight training is being done in Israel.
Right now, Israel is just doing academic and simulator training only."
Umm, flight training in Israel, on M.346s? Anyway, the local rags report 140 squadron, formerly known as "The Golden Eagles" will be the first unit to reform at Nevatim in Dec 2016. No doubt the type will be called the OhDir in the foreign press (Ayit=Ahit so why not).
Starman wrote:"The first Israeli F-35I “Adir” is in final assembly, but flight training is being done in Israel.
Right now, Israel is just doing academic and simulator training only."
Umm, flight training in Israel, on M.346s? Anyway, the local rags report 140 squadron, formerly known as "The Golden Eagles" will be the first unit to reform at Nevatim in Dec 2016. No doubt the type will be called the OhDir in the foreign press (Ayit=Ahit so why not).
OMG - lets stick with the musical references (but I think you might have to explain the Profound Purple imagery to those who didn't open the Patrouille Suisse link earlier ) "Meet the new badge....same as the old badge ..." For sure this will become the "Blackbird Sqn" as "foreign press" reports always call the badge with a black bird the Yellow Bird sqn.
On the first flights and delivery front I did some searching to find some gaps:
AF-72 13-5066/LF flying 12 aug 2015
AF-79 13-5073/OT flying f/f aug-2015
AF-83 13-5077/HL flying end Oct 2015
AF-84 13-5078/LF Flying Dec 2015, 61 FS, Luke AFB Delivered 18 dec 2015
AF-86 13-5080/LF Flying 30 Dec 2015 62 FS?, act, Luke AFB photo 30 Dec 2015
AF-87 13-5081/HL flying 2016 34 FS act, Hill AFB delivered 26 Jan 2016, 6th aircraft to be added to the first front line USAF sq, 34 FS
Tomorrow the FY17 details are expected to be revealed. Below already a signal it could be a positive outcome for the Navy F-35C:
Good-Bye, UCLASS; Hello, Unmanned Tanker, More F-35Cs In 2017 Budget
PENTAGON: After more than a year of intense debate over whether the Navy’s future UCLASS drone should be a long-range stealth bomber or a lightly armed scout, the Defense Department has chosen — neither. Instead, the 2017 budget proposes a program that is less ambitious than either version of UCLASS but, to their mind, more immediately useful than either: an unmanned, carrier-launched aerial refueling tanker.
PENTAGON: After more than a year of intense debate over whether the Navy’s future UCLASS drone should be a long-range stealth bomber or a lightly armed scout, the Defense Department has chosen — neither. Instead, the 2017 budget proposes a program that is less ambitious than either version of UCLASS but, to their mind, more immediately useful than either: an unmanned, carrier-launched aerial refueling tanker.
So “we decided to accelerate F-35C buys,” the official said.
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No, fuel tanks this time 
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:
) "Meet the new badge....same as the old badge ..." For sure this will become the "Blackbird Sqn" as "foreign press" reports always call the badge with a black bird the Yellow Bird sqn.