The Marine Corps variant of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter took its first training flight yesterday at Eglin AFB, Fla.
The F-35B flight is the beginning of a gradual process that will eventually expand to short-take offs and vertical landings, the main feature of the Marine aircraft, known as (STOVL), that separates it from the Air Force and Navy versions of the Joint Strike Fighter. Initially, the plane will engage in conventional take-offs and landings.
The first F-35Bs arrived at the Florida base in January to begin training missions that range from flights to maintenance.
The F-35B had lagged behind the other variants because of technical problems associated with the STOVL capability, but it was taken off probation after a year by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
The Lockheed Martin [LMT]-built planes represent the largest acquisition program in the Pentagon history. The three services plan to buy a combined 2,443 aircraft for a price tag of $400 billion. The total program, including operations and maintenance over the fighters’ lifetime, is estimated to be $1 trillion problems.
The program has been heavily criticized for ballooning costs and technical problems that have resulted in redesign and concurrency costs.
In its fiscal 2013 budget request recently, the Pentagon said it was restructuring the program for the third time and would scale back buys of the aircraft to give it more time to mature, reduce concurrency costs and save about $15 billion over the next five years.
The Pentagon now plans to buy 13 fewer F-35s in the next fiscal year and 179 fewer than planned over the five-year period through fiscal 2017.