Australia’s first F-35A strike fighter—dubbed AU-1—flew for the first time on Sept. 29. Piloted by Lockheed Martin test pilot Al Norman, the aircraft made a two-hour functional check flight from the company’s Ft. Worth, Texas, plant. The aircraft will be officially delivered to the Australian Air Force later this year, when it will join other F-35As at Luke AFB, Ariz. There it will be part of the combined international F-35A pilot training enterprise, which is expected eventually to field 140 of the fighters. Australia is one of the original nine partners on the JSF project; in exchange for Australia’s investment in F-35 development, Australian industry gets a share of F-35 production work. So far, Australian companies have received $412 million (US dollars) in JSF-related contracts. Beyond the nine partners, Israel, Japan, and South Korea have signed up to buy the F-35 under US foreign military sales. In Australian service, the F-35A will join the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and its EA-18G Growler electronic warfare variant.
Today’s armament maintainers are tasked with performing flightline (O-Level) maintenance with an assortment of legacy test sets that greatly limit the ability to quickly and efficiently verify armament system readiness, diagnose failures, and ultimately return the aircraft to full mission...