In its first demonstration of supersonic flight, the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter flew Nov. 13 at Mach 1.05 or about 680 mph—and carried the weight of a full internal weapons load, according to a Nov. 14 company release. “The F-35 transitioned from subsonic to supersonic just as our engineers and our computer modeling had predicted,” said Jon Beesley, Lockheed’s chief F-35 test pilot, commenting, too, on its retention of “precise handling qualities” at that high speed. Beesley flew the conventional takeoff and landing F-35 AA-1 from Lockheed’s Fort Worth, Tex., production facility, climbing to 30,000 feet and accelerating to Mach 1.05 over a rural area in north Texas for a period of eight minutes and four transitions through the sound barrier, stated the release. Future testing will take the aircraft to its top speed of Mach 1.6 with a full weapons load. Beesley noted that it was significant that the F-35 had achieved its first supersonic flight with a full load.
Some lawmakers in the Senate are advocating for a more bipartisan approach to paying for the Pentagon’s $185 billion Golden Dome missile defense project, arguing that the effort’s goal of bolstering homeland defenses has support across ideological lines but the process for funding it has been politically charged—leaving the program’s…