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 The X-35B completed one of history’s most successful flight test programs on 30 July after achieving what no aircraft has ever done: a short takeoff, a level supersonic dash, and a vertical landing in a single flight. Test pilots Maj. Art Tomassetti of the US Marine Corps and Simon Hargreaves of BAE Systems each accomplished the unprecedented feat, which will be required of production JSFs for the Marines, UK Royal Navy, and UK Royal Air Force. Tomassetti flew Mission X, as the operation is known to JSF team members, on 20 July. His mission included an automatic short takeoff at eighty knots, an in-flight conversion from the STOVL propulsion system to the conventional system, a climb to 25,000 feet, and acceleration to Mach 1.05. He then conducted a series of flying-qualities tests, converted back to STOVL mode, decelerated to a hover at 150 feet above ground level, and landed vertically.
Hargreaves repeated the Mission X performance on 26 July, adding a steep afterburner climb, 360-degree rolls at twenty degrees angle of attack, and an aerial refueling. He achieved Mach 1.06 at 25,000 feet. In a subsequent flight, he demonstrated a sixty-knot automatic short takeoff (about five hundred feet), then transitioned into a sustained hover, executed a 360-degree pirouette, and landed vertically with an aircraft weight of more than 34,000 pounds—double the hover weight of legacy STOVL aircraft. In a later flight the same day, chief test pilot Tom Morgenfeld expanded the X-35B’s flight envelope with a full afterburner takeoff and accelerations to Mach 1.2 at 25,000 and 30,000 feet. The X-35B, which completed all Concept Development program objectives, generated all required contract flight test data.
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