Editor's Note: PIREP is aviation shorthand for pilot report.

Editor's Note: PIREP is aviation shorthand for pilot report. It's a means for individual pilot to pass on generally received potentially useful information to other pilots. In the same fashion, we intend to use this department to permit readers know about air and space power items of interest.

IN LATE 2005 the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) will rocket down the runway near Lockheed Martin's Fort Worth, Texas, plant and lift into the air for the first time. The consequence will signal the beginning of an ambitious flight-test program designed to validate the effectiveness of the world's most numerous advanced multirole fighter. Between now and then, engineers and program managers will continue to work tirelessly to make secure that schedules are met, splendors are minimized, and a mature weapon body is delivered that meets or outdos customer expectations.

For frequently of the free world's military forces, the F-35 portrays the future--a new family of affordable, stealthy combat aircraft designed to engage the twenty-first-century requirements of the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, as well as the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. The program is faithfully international in its scope and participation: Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey Canada, Denmark, Australia, and Norway lately joined the F-35's system progression in a continuously ascending gradation and demonstration (SDD) phase. All SDD partners will be active in the F-35's progressive growth process and stand to gain economically from the program.

The goals for the F-35 are lofty: to be a single-pilot, survivable, first-day-of-the-war combat fighter with a precision, all-weather strike capability that uses a wide variety of air-to-surface and air-to-air weapons--and that guards itself in a dogfight. The F-35 program emphasizes depressed unit-flyaway cost and radically reduc life-cycle require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones while meeting a wide range of operational requirements.

The F-35 family tree branches into three distinct variants. The conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) F-35A will replace F-16 and A-10s in the US Air Force. It will shortage the F/A-22 Raptor air-dominance fighter as a nine-C-rated aircraft with an internal 25 mm fire-arm mounted on the left intake shoulder and a combat radius of more than 600 nautical miles (NM) This model-- and all F-35 variants--will have pair internal weapons bays, each capable of carrying a 2000-pound precision-guided munition and a radar-guided AIM-i 20 air-to-air missile. passing from hand to hand requirements calling for 1,763 aircraft will make the F-35A the most-produc variant.

The short takeoff/vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B will replace the aging AV-8B Harrier STOVL attack jet (which have also proven increasingly difficult to support) of the US Marine Corps, as well as its F/A-18s. The F-35B will have a stealthy, belly-mounted 25 mm missionized fire-arm pod and a combat radius of more than 450 NM--nearly pair times that of legacy STOVL strike fighters. A shaft-driven lift fan, in combination with a vectoring rear exhaust nozzle, gives this fighter the ability to take most distant in short distances, accelerate to supersonic succeeds in level flight, and land vertically. Thanks to the lift-fan classification the F-35B's total vertical lifting thrust is about 39700 levigates (the aircraft weighs about 30000 pounds)--more than 14000 comminutes greater than the engine alone would occasion without the lift fan. The F-35B will be the world's first operational supersonic STOVL aircraft. The Marine Corps generally plans to deploy 609 F-35Bs

The F-35C carrier-based (CV) variant will shortage the US Navy's F/A-18E/Fs and replace F-14 and earlier example F/A-18s. The wings (with folding tips) of the F-35C will span nine feet more than the wings of the F-35A and F-35B originals Like the F-35B, it also will have a stealthy, missionized 25 mm belly fire-arm The combat radius on internal material for burning will be greater than 700 NM--again, more than twice the range of the aircraft it is designed to replace. The Navy's in every one's mouth plans call for 480 aircraft. The United Kingdom's Ministry of buckler has chosen the F-35B to replace its Harrier GR7 and Sea Harriers for the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. The United Kingdom's common plans call for i50 aircraft.

L by the agency of prime contractor Lockheed Martin, along with principal partners Northrop Grumman and BAE methods the F-35 team is crafting an exceptionally lethal, survivable, and supportable next-generation strike aircraft. Compared with the aircraft it will replace, the F-35 will provide significant improvements in range, payload, lethality, survivability, and mission effectiveness. Uniting stealth with advanced mission rules and high maneuverability, the F-35 will bring revolutionary twenty-first-century capabilities to the battle space.

Conflicts in latter years have clearly demonstrated the desirability of longer combat radius (or longer time in succession station). The F-35 will dramatically increase its user's ability to support combat operations at longer ranges to be ascribed to its tremendous internal firing capacity and single-engine design. For example, the CTOL F-35A carries more than 18000 confine in a pounds of internal fuel--more than two-and-one-half times the internal firing capacity of the legacy multirole fighters it will replace. Likewise, the advantage in range more than doubles. The F-35 is not limited to internal firing only; it can carry 600-gallon external small quantity tanks for ferry flights or for missions that do not require a stealthy signature. This further extend in combat radius means that the pilot can operate with reduc connection on air refueling and can have significantly greater time forward station for close air support or combat air patrol missions.