F-35 Joint Strike Fighter: DOD Programs

Flight test teams operating the 18 test aircraft assigned to the developmental flight test centers nearly matched or exceeded flight test sortie goals through October 2013. This occurred despite loss of several government employee work days dueto furloughs and sequestration, and two fleet-wide grounding instances. Flight sciences testing made the planned progress in envelope expansion and handling qualities for the year; however, mission systems and weapons integration testing made little progress and continued to fall behind test point execution goals driven by upcoming fleet release and Services’ Initial Operational Capability plans.