Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Steve's Video Of The Day: Lockheed-Martin X-35 - Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)
Yesterday we marveled at the JSF "vertical takeoff", an amazing feat. The Lockheed Martin JSF team has developed three variants designed to meet the needs of the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.K. Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. These variants share a highly common structure that includes the same fuselage and internal weapons bay. The Lockheed Martin aircraft have common outer mold lines with common structural geometries, identical wing sweeps, and similar tail shapes. The aircraft carry weapons in two parallel bays located aft of the main landing gear. The canopy, radar, ejection system, subsystems, and avionics are common. All of the aircraft are powered by a modification of the same core engine, the Pratt & Whitney F119.
Commonality and flexibility are the basis for the Lockheed Martin JSF design. The high degree of commonality among the service aircraft variants, and across the total development and production program, is a key to affordability. Cooperation allows the participating services to share development costs, which in turn greatly reduces total cost, when compared to an independent program for each service. Together, the services plan to purchase approximately 3,000 aircraft, so this highly common design will benefit from economies of scale. Additional international sales of approximately 2000 JSFs may further reduce costs.
Let's check the "young lassie" out in a little more detail. The powerplant sure gives the airplane a "unique howl"!
VIDEO -
WEBSITE - Joint Strike Fighter
Commonality and flexibility are the basis for the Lockheed Martin JSF design. The high degree of commonality among the service aircraft variants, and across the total development and production program, is a key to affordability. Cooperation allows the participating services to share development costs, which in turn greatly reduces total cost, when compared to an independent program for each service. Together, the services plan to purchase approximately 3,000 aircraft, so this highly common design will benefit from economies of scale. Additional international sales of approximately 2000 JSFs may further reduce costs.
Let's check the "young lassie" out in a little more detail. The powerplant sure gives the airplane a "unique howl"!
VIDEO -
Lockheed-Martin X-35 - Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)
WEBSITE - Joint Strike Fighter
