In an Oct. 30 release, Northrop Grumman said it had begun producing the center fuselage for the first international F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, an F-35B short takeoff/vertical landing model for Britain. The assembly process began Oct. 26 at the company’s Palmdale, Calif., production facility when employees loaded an all-composite air inlet duct into a special tooling structure called a jig, the first of some 18 major steps toward assembling the center fuselage. Mark Tucker, vice president and F-35 program manager for Northrop’s Aerospace Systems sector, said that the company is using a “disciplined approach” to manage costs and engineering changes and thereby “continuing to reduce program risks.” Work on the British fuselage started three days earlier than planned. Final assembly of the aircraft takes place at prime contractor Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth, Tex., facility.
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.