The Pentagon and BAE Systems
invested hundreds of millions of pounds
in constructing three large assembly and
machine halls at Samlesbury in Lancashire
where the rear fuselage assemblies for
every F-35 would be built. This was a new
concept in aircraft manufacturing.
The British government and BAE
Systems secured a chunk of the global
F-35 project in excess of the work that
would have been needed to just build the
aircraft required by the RAF and Royal Navy.
The UK’s aircraft are being assembled at
Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant in Texas
and they will have to be overhauled at the
F-35 European regional maintenance centre
to be set up in Turkey.
Britain also has limited ability to
independently integrate new weapons,
sensors and other systems into the aircraft
without the approval of the US-design
authority.In effect, the UK has gained industrial
participation and cost reductions through
economics of scale, but lost a large degree
of sovereign control of its own F-35B
aircraft.
Once Lockheed Martin and its X-35
design had won the JSF contract in 2001,
the project moved into the development
phase to build a flying prototype and then
production F-35 aircraft.
Everything about the programme is big.
More than 3,000 are required by the US
military and a similar number are projected
for export, making it the largest non-civil
aircraft programme of the 21st century. Just
developing the aircraft has cost $55bn and
the initial production contracts are running at
more than $319bn. Keeping the global fleet
of F-35s flying for 70 years is projected as
costing more than $1 trillion.
The UK’s share of the F-35 programme
also generates some massive numbers.Last year (2017), the National Audit Office
(NAO) estimated the cost of buying and
operating the first batch of 48 aircraft
would cost £5.8bn by 2024. When the
development, support and infrastructure
costs are included the price tag, as
estimated by the NAO, is more than £9bn.
The sailing of HMS Queen Elizabeth
from the Aircraft Carrier Alliance’s shipyard
at Rosyth, near Edinburgh, in June meant
the UK project to regenerate its carrier strike
capability had taken a major step forward.
Out of the two new carriers, one is intended
to be available to sail on operations on a
24/7 basis.US-BASED WORK
The air element of the carrier strike project
has also been making progress but is still
predominately based in the United States.
Once it joined the JSF programme
as a Level One partner, the UK began
to post military personnel to the US-led
Joint Program Office (JPO) to oversee the
development and then entry to service of
the F-35. At first, the British people were
involved in setting the requirements and
design of the aircraft.
They then moved on to participating in
flight testing and then operational test and
evaluation. The former activity is carried out
by UK military and BAE Systems’ personnel
of the F-35 Integrated Test Force (ITF) based
at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, and the
latter is the responsibility of the RAF’s 17(R)
Sqn based at Edwards AFB, California. The
UK’s first F-35B was delivered to Edwards
on January 13, 2015 and three UK jets fly
from there.
So far ten UK production standard aircraft
have been delivered to MCAS Beaufort in
South Carolina, where the first batch of
RAF and Royal Navy pilots and groundcrew
are undergoing conversion training. It is
expected that the first UK F-35 unit, the
RAF’s famous 617 ‘Dambusters’ will re-form56 Aviation News incorporating Jets January 2018A hovering F-35B – a reinforced landing pad is being built at RAF Marham to allow pilots to practise vertical take-offs and landings.
Crown copyright 2016The RAF F-35B, which visited the Royal International Air Tattoo in 2016, takes on fuel en route to
the UK. Note the Union flag in the cockpit. Crown copyright 201654-58_raf_f35DC.mf.indd 56 30/11/2017 12:18