Lockheed Martin has announced that the F-35 Lightning II fleet recently passed the 15,000 flying hours milestone.
The F-35’s prime contractor says as of April 7 operational F-35s had flown a total of 8,050 flight hours, while SDD development aircraft had accrued 7.123 flights hours.
“In another clear sign of program maturation, reliability metrics are trending upward as the operations tempo picks up and recently, 60 F-35 sorties were flown in one day,” said J.D. McFarlan, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for F-35 Test & Verification.
