Northrop Grumman delivered the first fuselage for the first F-35 strike fighter to be assembled in Japan. On Oct. 2, the company unveiled the fuselage at its Palmdale, Calif., facility. The fuselage will be a part of the first Japanese-made F-35 assembled at the Final Assembly and Checkout facility in Nagoya. The fuselage will be part of a conventional takeoff and landing variant. Consul General of Japan, Hidehisa Horinouchi, represented Japan at the ceremony. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will assemble and checkout the Japanese F-35s, according to a program office release. The milestone comes about one month after the first Italian-made F-35 took its first flight on Sept. 7 at Cameri AB, Italy.
The Pentagon fulfilled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's promise to slash the number of Religious Affiliation Codes used by the military to track the volume of members adhering to different religions and to shape the chaplain corps to support them. The change reduces the number of religions counted for such purposes…