The Air Force will have its first F-35A Local Area Operations flight “next week sometime” at Eglin AFB, Fla., its chief of staff said yesterday.
“In respect to Local Area Operations, or LAO, we will have (our) first flight next week sometime,” Gen. Norton Schwartz told reporters at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “The aircraft will (also) be flown by credentialed test aviators.”
An Air Force spokeswoman said the specific date has not been set.
According to an Air Force spokesman, Local Area Operations are familiarization routes around local areas so instructors can become familiar with the flying area before starting actual training flights.
Schwartz also said the flights will be on “established training profiles, both in terms of geometry and use of airspace around Eglin…in order to validate the portions of the training curriculum and procedures of getting out to the airspace and turning,” he said.
He added that “for the moment,” these tests will be flown by one Air Force and one Marine Corps test-qualified aviator.
The service said Tuesday that officials at the Aeronautical Systems Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, issued a Military Flight Release that would allow Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] F-35A fighter to begin initial operations at Eglin. The statement also said these initial F-35A flights will be “limited, scripted and conducted within the restrictions and stipulations of the MFR.”
The F-35 has been plagued by developmental problems, cost overruns and delays, prompting the Pentagon to restructure the program for the third time to slow down production. The Pentagon announced early in February it was removing 179 of the planes from the five-year procurement plan beginning in fiscal 2013 (Defense Daily, Feb. 14).