The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program Research Paper

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program - Research Paper Example This approach will result in a higher production rate thereby satisfying the both the local and international demand. Currently the company has about 600 workers doing assembly work on the floor and the number is expected to increase to 3,500 when the production of the F-35 jet fighter hits full throttle. There will be three shifts a day and approximately one aircraft will be complete per working day. As the plane moves through the assembly line there are various workstations to cater for different needs of the variants of the aircraft. With this kind of strategy the company plans to make around 130 planes in the early stages of production as it prepares for a high rate phase in later years (Finn, 2013). For a while the production of the F-35 struggled to meet its required target numbers. This however changed in 2013 as everything changed for the better. It was then that progress in flight tests improved and the technical risks that were there before overcame. The production program was able to surpass 10,000 flight hours in September of 2013, the same amount which had been achieved in the previous years. Overall around 8,000 thousand tests have been performed and the marine variant has achieved 500 successful vertical landings (Von, 2013). Such landings proved the capability of the aircraft to land in areas with no landing strips. Through this the program was able to evaluate whether the desired performance goals had been achieved. The success of this tests led to increase in production of the aircraft from 11 planes in 2011 to 30 in 2012 and finally 36 in 2013.By November 2014 a total of 115 F-35’s had been produced. This can also be accredited to the fact that Lockheed Mar tin, the Corporation making the jet fighter adopted the automated moving line assembly system for production. With this increased production numbers the unit price for each aircraft witnessed a great drop. The drop is so big that the