Amazing Facts About The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II (Part 1)
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a single-engine multirole stealth fighter jet for all-weather mission purposes. The F-35 Lightning II is a part of the 5th generation fighter jets that are designed to perform both ground attacks and air superiority attack missions. At the moment, F-35 Lightning II has three of the following main variants.
- F-35A; a conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) model
- F-35B; a short take-off and vertical-landing (STOVL) model
- F-35C; a carrier-based catapult-assisted take-off but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) model
It is primarily built by Lockheed Martin but many of the following subcontractors were also involved in making this fantasy of a fighter jet into a full fledged reality.
- Northrop Grumman
- Pratt & Whitney
- BAE Systems
For our readers, we have selected a bunch of amazing facts about the Lockheed Martin F-25 Lightning II which are as follows.
Result of the biggest Arms Deal in the history of the military:-
Without a doubt, to sustain the modern warfare is an expensive task. In order to maintain the battle edge in the world of today, militaries have to spend a large part of their budget on obtaining a cutting edge and state of the art technological advancements. Due to this, the cost to make researches followed by development and implementation of such technologies are now normal to incur costs of several billion dollars.
Recently an important arms deal has been sanctioned in between Saudi Arabia and the USA for 100 billion dollars. Although there are many other fighters jets and attack helicopters are included in this deal, F-35 Lightning II is the primary object of interest for Saudi Arabia in this deal. As per the arms deal, Saudi Arabia has placed an order for nearly 85 of the F-35 Lightning IIs with the possibility to acquire many more of these aircraft in future.
Manufacturing carried out in 2 separate places:-
One of the amazing facts about the F-35 Lightning II is that unlike its fellow 5th generation fighter jet, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II is available for all the countries of the world to purchase. At the moment, F-35 Lightning II is being manufactured in three of the spate following locations across the world.
- Fort Worth, Texas, USA
- Camera, Italy
- Nagoya, Japan
What’s more interesting about the manufacturing process of F-35 Lightning II is that the aircraft needs more than 30000 individual parts which are provided for assembly to the factories from 1500 separate locations that are around the globe.
Suffered Oxygen System Complications:-
For any jet fighter’s primary task is to keep the pilot operating it safe and in optimum operational capability. Despite having an AI system for autopiloting features, most fighter jets are unable to fly themselves on their own and for that human pilots are needed.
In order to keep the human pilots going in a jet fighter, these jet fighters are equipped with many amazing features. Out of these many features, Oxygen Supply System or simply called Oxygen Generator is the most crucial one of them all. During the early developmental stages and testings, F-35 Lightning II suffered from the oxygen generation as well as its delivery which placed the pilot at considerable risk. However, soon these problems were overcome but proved to be quite an engineering complexity in its own right.
Total Flight Hours done in by the F-35 Lightning II:-
The Lockheed Martin F-25 Lightning II suffered from any early stage developmental issues which involved the troubles from JSF. However, despite suffering from all these problems, Lockheed Martin F-25 Lightning II has currently logged in a total of nearly 90000 flight hours to date.
These flight hours include the flight from all of the Lockheed Martin F-25 Lightning II variants which is a promising feature on the future of the program.
Flight System with a Complex Code:-
To date, the flight system of the Lockheed Martin F-25 Lightning II is one of the most advanced and complex codes out there in the world. According to Lockheed, this flight system is being called either as “Supercomputer” or the “Brain” of F-35.
The flight system or also known as The Brian is composed of the 5 of the following salient sensors.
- Electronic Warfare (EW)
- Radar, Communication
- Navigation and Identification (CNI)
- Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS)
- the Distributed Aperture System (DAS)
What’s make the flight system really amazing is that the flight’s system in between has nearly 8 million lines of complex codes. This makes the Electronic Warfare (EW), Radar, Communication, Navigation and Identification (CNI), Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS) and the Distributed Aperture System (DAS) to be the only aircraft to have such a complex flight system compared to any other US or the Allied aircraft to date.
The engine of F-35 Lightning II:-
The initial reports of F-35 Lightning II were plagued by the rumors such as the aircraft was heavily underpowered. However, unlike these early rumors, the engine is the main reason for the amazing operational capability of the F-35 Lightning II.
The F-35 Lightning II is equipped with a single Pratt & Whitney F-135 afterburner turbofan engine. This engine is the one that was specially designed by Pratt & Whitney for the sake of operating F-35 Lightning II. According to Lockheed Martin, this engine of F-35 Lightning II is currently the most advanced and powerful engine to be ever fitted inside any of the rivaling fifth generation jet fighters.
The engine in its full operational capability is able to generate a total thrust power of 41000 lb/ft. as for the flexible design of both the jet and the engine, it allows for the aircraft to have operational flexibility provided help form its many other features.
Conclusion:-
There are many of the other amazing features about the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II which are all too amazing to be left out in our short article, we will be sure to get back to our readers with some more amazing facts about the F-35 Lightning II very soon.
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