Northrop Grumman has delivered its 1,500th centre fuselage for the F-35 Lightning II programme from its Integrated Assembly Line in Palmdale, California, the company stated.
The milestone was reached on 12 January and reflects continued production of centre fuselage sections for all three variants of the F-35 stealth fighter. Northrop Grumman said the work forms a core element of its role as a principal partner on the international F-35 programme. According to the company, the Palmdale Integrated Assembly Line uses advanced manufacturing technologies to produce a completed centre fuselage approximately every 30 hours. The single production line supports assembly for the conventional take-off and landing, short take-off and vertical landing, and carrier variants of the aircraft.
Northrop Grumman said the use of augmented and virtual reality tools has contributed to reductions in assembly time and technician training requirements, supporting increased production efficiency. As part of the wider F-35 industrial team, Northrop Grumman is responsible for several major systems and structures. The company produces the aircraft’s AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar and the integrated communications, navigation and identification system, as well as wing skins and elements of the aircraft’s low observable technologies.
In addition to manufacturing responsibilities, Northrop Grumman also provides sustainment support for F-35 operators in the United States and internationally, according to the company.
I guess that means we have made 1500 after fuselage sections as well. For all the talk of China being an unassailable industrial power, when the west puts its collective capacity to the task, it can still thoroughly outclass anyone else.
Hopefully the MAGA verse wakes up to that fact before it’s is too late.
That is still only ~290 frames per year.
Whilst having another 1,500 (produced) and 1,200 over the next ~4 years across NATO does give considerable inventory.
How much of this plane due we make?
Orange man has just slapped us with a 10% tariff on all goods until we support his Greenland ‘liberation’ plan🙄
Yep it’s great he’s now undertaking active political warfare again is allies who have objected in a reasonable way to him threatening to randomly invade another ally….
I’m pretty sure the US actually has an insane person for a president.
I think that apart from the most swivel eyed, buck toothed, inbred trailer park trash maga voter, it is patently obvious to the rest of the world that Trump is a hopelessly compromised Russian asset. Easily manipulated by gold and money and obsequious praise.
There must be some horrific findings in those Epstein files.
He just can’t comprehend that there will be consequences for any action against Greenland! Just for a start all NATO rights for American forces in Europe would be revoked leaving 80k+ stranded with no sea,air or land access! Are Americans actually going to fire upon NATO forces in Greenland? Judging by the demo yesterday in Nuuk at the very least they would be met by passive resistance no doubt leading to active resistance!. It took a third of the us navy sitting off the coast of Venezuela and months of planning just to do a raid!
The rub of it is there is no need for any of this bollocks the Danes and Greenlanders were open to more American bases if they wanted them🙄
I mean you’d hope if Trump open fire on NATO forces those 80k would be more than stranded. POW camps are expensive, but I guess any American gear captured would offset the costs?
Well they wouldn’t be going anywhere would they? just leave them inside their own wire and basically intern them! Don’t know whether you have read Harold Coyles book ‘The Ten Thousand’? An American corps fights its way to the German coast to be evacuated,works out in the book anyway🙄👍
I mean that’s pretty clearly based on Xenephon’s Anabasis except substitution an American unit for Xenephon’s greeks, because obviously everything has to be about them right?
👍not the first or last time history will be rewritten either😀
Seriously is there any talk in the Army about how the alliance would survive without the cousins?
As you know, Jacko, I had my doubts about the EPG from the start. Was that one officer worth the 10%… 🤷🏽