Saturday, August 21, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

F-35 JOINT STRIKE FIGHTERS: New jets coming to Nellis

New warplanes to play major role in base operations

The X-35A Joint Strike Fighter lifts off from Palmdale, Calif., Oct. 24, 2000, on its first flight from a Lockheed Martin facility to Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The X-35A was a test model for the F-35, which will replace some aging aircraft at Nellis Air Force Base in the coming years. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, COURTESY LOCKHEED MARTIN An F-16 lands at Nellis Air Force Base during Red Flag ceremonies earlier this week. F-16s will be phased out at Nellis. Photo by John Gurzinski.

In about five years, Nellis Air Force Base will add a new warplane to its fleet of fighter jets and bombers.

A notice that will appear in Monday's Federal Register calls for 36 of the nation's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets to be produced and delivered to the base between 2009 and 2028.

Military officials have described the F-35 as an air combat workhorse, with versions being developed to meet the future needs of the Marines and the Navy as well as the U.S. Air Force.

The 36 warplanes coming to Nellis will be used to train instructor pilots and support the Air Force Weapons School's mission of testing and evaluating state-of-the-art weapons systems and future combat capabilities, according to a copy of the notice obtained Friday by the Review-Journal.

"The Air Force will consider all environmental issues ... however the Air Force has currently identified air quality and noise as issues requiring detailed analysis," the notice reads.

The F-35 tactical fighter jets destined for Nellis will be some of the first off the assembly lines under a multi-billion-dollar program to replace the nation's aging F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolt tank killers. The F-16 and A-10 are both 1970s-vintage aircraft, although some F-16s still are being built for allied countries.

The Pentagon's 2005 budget set aside almost $4.6 billion for the program, but Congress allocated a lesser sum, $4.4 billion in a military spending bill that President Bush signed Aug. 5.

Lawmakers still might authorize the higher program amount as called for in a separate measure going through Congress.

The Defense Department intends to purchase 2,457 planes for $244.8 billion, or nearly $100 million per plane, including total development costs and decades of maintenance, according to cost estimates given to Congress by the Pentagon last year. The F-35's base price is about $40 million.

The two-page Federal Register notice calls for five public scoping meetings on the proposal next month in Nevada.

It calls for building hangars and workshops at Nellis to accommodate the F-35s beginning in 2007. Construction will take three years, but details about the number of personnel resulting from the basing plan were not available.

"The environmental impact process is expected to take about two years," Nellis spokesman Mike Estrada said Friday. "This is the same process we did for the F/A-22."

Nellis has eight F/A-22 Raptors and is expected to receive nine more in the next five or six years, Estrada said.

The stealthy Raptor is a supersonic cruiser that can cross the sprawling 12,000-square-mile Nellis range in seven minutes, evade enemy aircraft, drop bombs, fire air-to-air missiles and shoot a six-barrel cannon.

While both have radar-evading stealth technology, the Raptor is different than the Joint Strike Fighter in that its primary role is as an air dominance fighter in an air-to-air combat role.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, on the other hand, is an aircraft that will fly barely faster than the speed of sound. It will serve as an interdiction aircraft, providing air-to-ground strikes, dropping bombs and shooting cannons, Estrada said.

Paraphrasing Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper, Estrada said, "The F/A-22 is going to kick down the door and then the F-35 is going to come in and mop it up. It's the workhorse."

In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee in May, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers said the F-35 would "be a giant leap over existing attack/fighter capabilities."

But the military is continuing to work out design challenges that face the Joint Strike Fighter, which is in its third year of development, Myers said. Design teams are addressing the weight of the aircraft, which has affected performance requirements.

Workers at a Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas, began assembling the F-35's forward fuselage in July following central fuselage assembly in May at Northrop Grumman's facility in Palmdale, Calif.

The first flight of the F-35 is planned for 2006, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. officials have said.

A test model, the X-35A, made its first flight Oct. 24, 2000, at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The F-35 base prices were estimated to be $40 million apiece for the Air Force version and $50 million each for the short-takeoff, vertical landing design for the Marines and the United Kingdom's Royal Navy, according to Aerospaceweb.org, a nonprofit organization operated by engineers and scientists in the aerospace field.

An aircraft-carrier model for the U.S. Navy will have a $50 million price tag.