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AE Systems is one of Lockheed
Martin’s most important industry
partners in the JSF programme.
This year, it will deliver the 400th F-
rear fuselage section from its bespoke
manufacturing plant at Salmesbury,
Lancashire. The company is building the
aft fuselage, horizontal and vertical tails of
every variant of the F-35 and the programme
of record currently calls for 3,184 aircraft.
It’s huge business for BAE Systems.
Martin Peters is the company’s F-35 flight
test manager and STOVL (short take-off
and vertical landing) test lead. Speaking
in his office at Naval Air Station Patuxent
River, Maryland, he told this magazine:
“Our involvement on F-35 dates back to
the X-35 development aircraft that flew at
Palmdale in 2001, through to the stand-up of
the F-35 industry team in Fort Worth. BAE
Systems is a central part of the F-35 global
enterprise and the only non-US Tier 1 partner
in the project with a 15% workshare that
spreads across various environments.”
Back in the very early days of the
programme, BAE Systems was heavilyinvolved in some of the initial flight-test work
developing control laws – predominantly
focusing on the F-35B. Indeed, company test
pilot Graham Tomlinson flew the very first
flight of the F-35B test aircraft BF-01 in June- “We’ve had a core team in the flight-
test community since 2002,” says Peters.
This has included significant participation
by British flight-test engineers in the $55bn
System Development and Demonstration
(SDD) phase. This was formally completed
on April 11 when F-35C test aircraft CF-
completed a mission to collect loads data
while carrying external 2,000lb (907kg) GBU-
31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs)
and AIM-9X Sidewinder air-to-air missiles.
The SDD flight-test programme began in
December 2006 when F-35A AA-1 first flew.
Since then the joint government and industry
team has used 19 test aircraft to conduct
more than 9,200 sorties, accumulated
over 17,000 flight hours and executed
more than 65,000 test points that verified
the design, durability, software, sensors,
weapons capability and performance of
all three variants of the Lightning II.
The SDD programme will formally conclude
when the aircraft’s initial operational
test and evaluation (IOT&E) is completed
and full-rate production is approved in
late 2019. Pre-IOT&E events are already
underway, and the full evaluation is
scheduled to begin this September.
As part of the SDD, the test team conducted
six at-sea detachments and performed more
than 1,500 vertical landing (VL) tests with the
F-35B. The developmental flight test team
completed 183 weapon separation tests, 46
weapons delivery accuracy (WDA) tests and
33 mission effectiveness tests, which included
numerous multi-ship missions that pitted
up to eight F-35s against advanced threats.
Although SDD flight-testing has been
completed, the programme will continue
the development of phased capability
improvements and modernisation of the
F-35 under the Joint Program Office’s
Continuous Capability Development and
Delivery (C2D2), which will generate Block
4 enhancements. This effort will provide
the Lightning II with incremental
capability improvements thatB
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