The 
F-35 program leadership has cleared some, but not all, F-35 test aircraft to resume flight operations after an in-flight anomaly with one aircraft last week temporarily suspended operations. F-35 spokesman Joe DellaVedova told the Daily Report Tuesday that three F-35As (AF-1, AF-2, AF-3) and four F-35Bs (BF-1, BF-2, BF-3, BF-4) are no longer under the flight suspension. In fact, AF-1 on Monday became the first F-35 test aircraft to return to flight. However, three test assets (AF-4, BF-5, CF-1) and the first two F-35 production-version airplanes (AF-6, AF-7) remain grounded, he said. The fleet-wide flight suspension went into effect as a safety precaution after AF-4 experienced a dual generator failure and oil leak during a March 9 flight at Edwards AFB, Calif. Program officials continue to investigate the root cause, but already have determined that the issue is unique to a newer generator configuration that first appeared in the later batch of test aircraft, said DellaVedova. Therefore, they rescinded the flight suspension on the earlier test aircraft, he said.
The defense intelligence community has tried three times in the past decade to build a “common intelligence picture”—a single data stream providing the information that commanders need to make decisions about the battlefield. The first two attempts failed. But officials say things are different today.