The latest on the testing of our "new" fighters
Active service for the Australian purchase appears to be still a long way of.
Sorry for the long C & P
The F-35 variants have been testing for 11 years
Lockheed Martin's three F-35 Lightning II strike fighter variants have completed what the company called the most comprehensive flight test program in aviation history. On April 11 at US Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, Navy test aircraft CF-2 carrying external 2,000-lb (907-kg) GBU-31 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) and AIM-9X Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles completed the final developmental test flight of the System Development and Demonstration (SDD) phase of the program.
According to Lockheed, a team of over a thousand SDD flight test engineers, maintainers, pilots, and support personnel completed full flight-envelope tests on all three variants of the F-35, including six at-sea detachments with over 1,500 vertical landing tests for the F-35B, 183 Weapon Separation Tests, 46 Weapons Delivery Accuracy tests, and 33 Mission Effectiveness tests that included multi-ship missions with eight F-35s taking on advanced threats. One remarkable aspect of this testing program was that it didn't involve a loss of either a single pilot or airframe.
Now that the SDD phase has been completed, the F-35 needs to pass through an Operational Test and Evaluation before the US Department of Defense can give the go-ahead for full-scale production, starting with the Block 3F capability being cleared for operations. In addition, flight tests will continue to help improve performance and modernize the aircraft as technology progresses.
