CATBird Airborne, Too

The Cooperative Avionics Test Bed, CATB or CATBird, was flown for the first time on 23 January at Mojave, California. CATB, a highly modified 737 designed to validate the F-35's avionic systems, will be used to develop and verify the F-35's capability to collect and fuse data from multiple sensors in a dynamic airborne environment. The flight was the first of approximately twenty sorties scheduled for the initial test phase. As of mid February, the former Lufthansa-owned airliner had accumulated almost twenty-five hours in eight sorties. F-35 team partner BAE Systems modified the aircraft.

Photo By Darin Russell