F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a multi-role fighter designed for ground attack with a secondary air-to-air capability. The F-35 uses many technologies from the F-22 Raptor, and is being bought by the US Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps, the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy.

The F-35 is designed to replace the AV-8 Harrier II, Harrier GR7/9, Sea Harrier, A-10 Thunderbolt II, F/A-18 Hornet and F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft currently in service with the US Air Force, US Navy, US Marine Corps, Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. Its primary function will be close air support and tactical bombing with air-to-air combat as a secondary role. It will also use stealth features, and be almost undetectable to radar.

Three variants have been planned. The conventional take-off and landing (or CTOL) version, which is what most types of aircraft are (a CTOL aircraft is an aircraft that can only take-off and land on a conventional runway) will be designated F-35A and will be used by the US Air Force.

The second version of the Joint Strike Fighter will be the short take-off vertical landing (or STOVL) version and will be called the F-35B. A STOVL aircraft is an aircraft that only needs a short runway to take-off and can land vertically. The AV-8 Harrier II is a STOVL aircraft. The STOVL version of the F-35 will be used by the US Marine Corps, US Navy and the Royal Navy.

The third version will be the carrier-based (or CV) F-35C. A carrier-based aircraft is an airplane (not a helicopter or STOVL aircraft) that can land and take-off from aircraft carriers. This variant will be used by the US Navy, and will be the Navy's first dedicated stealth attack aircraft, working alongside the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet carrier-launched fighters.

The United States and United Kingdom have done most of the work on the F-35, and so far are the only major nations that will be purchasing the aircraft. But Australia has shown interest in the F-35, to replace the aging RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) fleet of F/A-18 Hornets and F-111 Aardvarks. The RAAF has delayed a final decision on the F-35 from 2006 until 2008, but in their opinion it is an excellent aircraft and they are strongly in favour of it.

The only problems with the F-35 are that it does not have good dogfighting ability, it has short range and a lack of supercruise (supercruise is where an aircraft can fly faster than the speed of sound without the use of afterburners). Some people also question its cost efficiency. Even though the F-22 Raptor is much more expensive to buy than the F-35, over time the F-22 program may actually turn out to be cheaper. Still, the US Air Force, US Marines and US Navy plan to buy a total of well over 1,000 F-35s.

Development of the F-35 was started in 1993 when the Joint Advanced Strike Technology (JAST) program was created as a result of a United States Department of Defense (DoD) Bottom-Up-Review. The results of this review were to continue the ongoing F-22 and F/A-18E/F programs, cancel the Multirole Fighter (MRF) and A/F-X programs and start the JAST program.

The JAST program office was established in January 1994. It would develop aircraft, weapon and sensor technology that would support the future development of tactical aircraft, and also replace several old US and UK aircraft with a common family of aircraft.

The contract for development of the prototypes was awarded in November 1996 to Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. under which each was to produce two aircraft which were to demonstrate CTOL, CV (carrier-launched), and STOVL. In the same year the UK Ministry of Defense initiated the Future Carrier Borne Aircraft project, a replacement for the Sea Harrier and Harrier GR7. The F-35 was selected for this project in January 2001.

The construction contract was awarded to Lockheed-Martin in October 2001 when Lockheed's X-35 beat Boeing's X-32. Announcing the decision, DoD officials and the UK Minister of Defence Procurement said that while both aircraft met or exceeded requirements, the X-35 outperformed the X-32 consistently.

Armament: One GAU-12/U 25mm cannon, internally-mounted with 180 rounds of ammunition on the F-35A, externally-mounted with 220 rounds on the F-35B/C, two AIM-120 AMRAAMs, two AIM-9 Sidewinders or two AIM-132 ASRAAMs mounted internally on the inside of the doors of two bomb bays, bomb bays can hold one air-to-air or air-to-ground weapon each (these could include AIM-120 AMRAAMs and JDAMs) or up to 2,000 pounds of JSOWs and Small Diameter Bombs in each bay, or up to four Brimstone anti-armor missiles, Cluster Munitions (WCMD) or High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARMs). The MBDA Meteor air-to-air missile is being updated to fit internally into the missile spots of the F-35. At the expense of becoming more detectable to radar, more missiles, bombs and fuel tanks can be attached to four wing pylons and two wingtip positions. Wing pylons can only hold short range air-to-air missiles, while the Storm Shadow and Joint Air To Surface Stand-off Missile (JASSM) cruise missiles can be carried in addition to the stores already integrated