How Lockheed’s F-35 Rose From the Ashes to Dominate the Global Fighter Market

Dan Goure

F-35, United States

Like the mythical bird, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has risen from the ashes.  

It’s called the Lightning II, but perhaps it should be renamed the Phoenix. Like the mythical bird, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has risen from the ashes.  This is a program that once seemed to be on life support, where the short takeoff/vertical landing (VSTOL) variant was placed on a two-year probation by then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Unquestionably, the challenges of producing a single fighter in three variants for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps proved more difficult than originally thought.

Despite significant schedule slippage and additional costs, the F-35 program is now hitting all its scheduled targets and performing excellently. Last year, the Marine Corps declared the initial operating capability (IOC) for that variant, the F-35B. Yesterday, the Corps formally stood up its second F-35 squadron. The Air Force is on track to declare IOC for the F-35A before the end of 2016. The Navy expects IOC for the carrier variant, the F-35C, in 2018 or 2019. All three services are deep into the development of concepts of operations for employing this new capability in concert with their fourth generation aircraft. Hundreds of pilots from the three services and almost a dozen countries have gone through or are currently receiving training on the F-35.

The F-35 will not only be America’s premier fifth generation fighter, but the world’s. From its inception, the JSF was going to be an international fighter. Although the U.S. was always going to be a 600-pound gorilla in the room, if, for no other reason, that it planned to acquire more than 2,400 F-35s, allied nations were in on the program from the start. The F-35 Consortium, consisting of the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Australia, Norway and Denmark, contributed more than $4 billion towards the program’s development costs. The aerospace industries in each of these countries also contributed critical technologies. They hoped to buy between 600 and 700 JSFs. In addition, several of these nations will become major regional maintenance and sustainment hubs.