Air Force’s newest weapons displayed at Aviation Nation

Eric Leake

Monday, Nov. 15, 2004 | 9:28 a.m.

Firmin Berta went to the Aviation Nation air show Sunday for the flyovers, the people -- and to see what his money bought.

"I like to come see where my taxpayers dollars are going. There's a lot of them spent around here," said Berta, a veteran of the Korean War.

By the sound of his praise for two of the Air Force's newest planes -- the F/ A-22 Raptor and the future F-35 Joint Strike Fighter -- he approves.

The Raptor is expected to be a eligible for any Air Force operation by the end of next year, Lockheed Martin's Billy Diehl said. His company builds the Raptors and F-35 stealth fighters.

Diehl said the F-35 would be in the military in significant numbers within a decade.

The F-35 is the product of a joint program between the Air Force, the Marines, the Navy, the United Kingdom, and seven other nations. Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing in design of the plane.

Different models of the F-35 have various features required by the participating branches. For example, the Marine model is capable of vertical takeoffs and landings by repositioning the single jet engine.

"It's so much of a cost savings when you can design and build basically the same airplane for all three services," Diehl said.

He said the F-35 can also take off from a runway of less than 550 feet in length while fully loaded. An F-16 fighter, on the other hand, needs about 3,000 feet, Diehl said.

Diehl is an Air Force veteran and flew F-16s for 20 years. He has not flown the F-35, but said, "I've talked to all the test pilots. They love it." He said pilots are coming to the plane

A full-scale model of the F-35, not the actual plane, was on display at Nellis Air Force Base Sunday. The real thing will cost about $45 million, Diehl said, inexpensive for a stealth fighter -- they usually go for upwards of $100 million. He said the Air Force is considering buying 1,763 of them.

Next to the F-35 model was a working Raptor. The $133 million plane flew over the crowd at the air show.

The pilot did not show off what it can do, much of which is classified, because crews are still learning the full capabilities of the plane, said Jim Conlin, who manages the plane's customer requirements operations for Lockheed Martin.

What they are learning is that it can out-perform any other fighter.

"There's nothing that can touch it. It's like bringing a gun to a knife fight," Conlin said.

But the real threat driving warplane design, Conlin said, is not so much from the air as it is surface-to-air defenses.