The inaugural flight of the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter took place Friday at 12:44 CST at Lockheed Martin’s Forth Worth, Tex., production facility. Company chief test pilot Jon Beesley noted in a company release that the new fighter “performed beautifully” and called it a “great start for the flight test program. Beesley took the conventional take-off and landing variant of the F-35 through a series of maneuvers, flying for about 30 minutes. It now enters a 12,000-hour flight-test program, adding to some 10,000 hours of lab tests. Dan Crowley, Lockheed’s F-35 point man took aim at concerns that the Pentagon is “buying before testing” the JSF, saying, “The F-35 will enter service as the most exhaustively tested, most thoroughly proven fighter system in history.”
Northrop Grumman has broken ground on a major new production facility for the B-21 Raider, the company and the Air Force announced Oct. 6. The construction comes as a top service official said testing on the bomber is going well in the lead up to its planned introduction into the…
