LOCKHEED JOINT STRIKE FIGHTER GOES ON MAIDEN FLIGHT.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Lockheed Martin's second joint strike fighter took off on its maiden flight Saturday as the company and competitor Boeing approach a decision on which will get the multibillion dollar contract.

Flanked by two F-16 fighters, the twin-tailed craft zoomed to 10,000 feet from the Air Force Plant 42 runway, then went through checks of its controls, landing gear system, engine responsiveness and stability before landing 27 minutes later at Edwards Air Force Base.

``The promise that it showed today was terrific,'' Lockheed Martin test pilot Joe Sweeney said in a telephone news conference after the flight. ``The flying qualities and performance were at least as good and in some ways better than what I'd seen in simulations over the last five years.''

A decision on picking either Boeing or Lockheed Martin to build potentially thousands of joint strike fighters for the United States and the United Kingdom is expected to come by next Oct. 1.

First, however, the program must survive competition for tight defense money with Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor and the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

The joint strike fighter winner could reap as much as $1 trillion over the next two or three decades, counting the planned sales of more than 3,000 planes to U.S. and U.K. military services and an equal number to allies, plus years of maintenance and modification contracts.

Program manager Tom Burbage noted the Saturday flight's historic significance: The last aircraft Lockheed produced for the Navy was the S-3 submarine hunter almost 30 years ago.

``It's been a long time since Lockheed Martin put an airplane into the hands of the Navy,'' said Burbage, a former Navy pilot.

Sweeney said he was impressed with the ease at which the plane, designated the X-35C, set up for landing - an important quality for landing on an aircraft carrier flight deck - and with its speed of climb, despite being heavier than the Air Force version of the joint strike fighter.

The plane could make its second flight Monday, and begin simulated carrier lands - using a marked-off section of the Edwards runway to represent am aircraft carrier flight deck - this week, officials said.

Lockheed Martin's first joint strike fighter, the X-35A, completed flight tests examining qualities wanted by the Air Force and is back at Plant 42 being modified for short takeoffs and landings, a Marine requirement.

Meanwhile, a Boeing joint strike fighter, the X-32A, has completed a number of simulated carrier landings at Edwards, and now is being evaluated under the Air Force requirements. Boeing's short takeoff version, the X-32B, is going through tests on the ground at Plant 42.

Both Boeing and Lockheed built two aircraft for testing under the different requirements of the Air Force, Navy and Marines, but they went about it different ways.

Lockheed built Air Force and Navy versions, and now is modifying the Air Force plane with a vertical lift fan for the Marine tests. Boeing built one plane for the Navy and Air Force requirements, and a second as a short takeoff craft for the Marines.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

(color in AV edition only) Lockheed Martin's X-35C, the Navy version of the company's joint strike fighter, makes a low-speed taxi on a runway at Air Force Plant 42 during a day of testing for the new plane.

Lockheed Martin