F-35 Flight Test Update 8
7 August 2012
Through the end of June 2012, the System Development and Demonstration, or SDD, test pilots set new records for most flights in a month – 123 flights in March 2012 – and most test points in a month – 1,118 in June 2012. The F-35 test program had conducted 595 test flights in 2012 and accrued 4,830 test points.
First And Last
26 June 2012
Gallery to accompany First And Last (last active duty C-130E retirement) article in V27N2 issue
F-22 Milestones - Part 2
11 June 2012
While the delivery of the last F-22 in May 2012 marks the end of F-22 production, the history of the F-22 program is still being written at the operational and training units, in flight testing of new capabilities, at the support centers, and upgrade and modernization programs that will come in future years.
Last Of The Line: Raptor 4195 Delivered
6 June 2012
Photo gallery to accompany V27N2 article entitled Last Of The Line: Raptor 4195 Delivered
F-16s In Kandahar
4 June 2012
Pilots, maintainers, and personnel from the 132nd Fighter Wing, the Iowa Air National Guard F-16 unit in Des Moines, deployed to Afghanistan in February 2012.
4,500th F-16 Delivery
3 April 2012
The 4,500th F-16 Fighting Falcon built worldwide was delivered in ceremonies 3 April 2012 at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, Texas. Employees, customers, program officials, and national, state, and local elected officials attended. The milestone aircraft was an Advanced Block 52 F-16 for the Royal Moroccan Air Force.
Beyond Kingfish
10 March 2012
Convair abruptly halted efforts on its losing Kingfish design when the CIA selected the Lockheed A-12 in August 1959 as a high-speed, high-altitude replacement for the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. The CIA officially terminated Convair’s work on Project Gusto—the project code name for the Dragon Lady replacement—in February 1960. The company received a final payment for work related to the program in January 1963.However, only ten months later, Convair used the predecessor to Kingfish — FISH — as the starting point for design studies for an A-12 replacement.
F-35 Flight Test Update 7
8 March 2012
Through 3 March 2012, the F-35 test program had completed 161 flights totaling more than 250 flight hours and had accrued more than 1,100 test points. F-35B test pilots have executed twenty-three vertical landings so far this year. With several more checkout flights completed, thirty-three pilots have now flown the F-35. Twenty-six pilots are flying currently.
Tweak My Ride
7 March 2012
A few straightforward exterior tweaks will make larger military aircraft markedly better. Using mostly company research and development dollars, researchers found that what will be the most practical answer—an elusive intersection of cost, difficulty to engineer, improvement in aircraft efficiency, and length of time for payback on investment—ended up being slightly different for the C-130, the C-5, and the P-3.