Lockheed Martin will begin manufacturing F-35 center wing sections Friday at its plant in Marietta, Ga., the company has announced. Marietta is the current site of F-22 production. This work will occupy more than 320,000 square feet of production space at the site and is expected to employ more than 600 workers by 2016 as the F-35 program ramps up to full-rate-production rates of one aircraft per workday. “Marietta’s available facilities, tooling, and worker experience with the F-22 are key enablers for F-35 program production,” said Larry Lawson, Lockheed’s F-35 general manager. The move will alleviate capacity constraints at Lockheed’s facility in Fort Worth, Tex., where final assembly of the F-35 takes place, said company officials.
The Air Force kicked off one of its biggest exercises this week with the latest edition of Bamboo Eagle, featuring combined virtual and live training scenarios focused on test the command-and-control “nervous system” leaders need to operate on a complex joint battlefield spread over vast distances.
