Inside the long kilometers factory where f-35 fighters are made

• The F-35 Lightning II of Lockheed Martin is one of the most advanced fighter planes in the world.
• Business Insider visited an installation where the stealth jet is made.
• The production line of Fort Worth, Texas, launches more than 150 planes per year.

In a sprawling factory in Texas, thousands of people work 24 hours a day to assemble the fighter plane with the most advanced roles in the American army: the joint strike fighter F-35 Lightning II.

The installation, operated by the defense giant Lockheed Martin, covers more than one mile and launches more than 150 planes per year. It’s huge, with people who drive golf carts or bikes to travel from one end to the other.

Business Insider recently visited the factory, officially called Air Force Plant 4. An aerial view of the production chain, from right to left, reveals the enormous scale of the operation. The F -35 can be seen from the bare bones – pieces of metal largely unrecognizable to the unspecified eye – to a throw that is almost in its final form: a supersonic furtive fighter with a monomotor motor made to dominate a range D ‘motor combat operations.

The F-35 is the most expensive weapons program in the world, with an expected cost of more than 2 dollars. Elon Musk and others brutally criticized the plane in the middle of the cost of the program, the challenges of sustainability and the reverse of development. However, it is constantly upgraded and is widely recognized as a fifth generation fighter.

Lockheed says that jet production contributes to around $ 72 billion a year to the American economy Thanks to its network of suppliers and hundreds of thousands of workers, spread across the country.

It takes about a year and a half to build a new F-35

The Air Force 4 factory has been in war for decades. He began producing bombers during the Second World War before going to F-111 Aardvark, now retired in the 1960s. Several years later, he began to build F-16.

The first joint strike hunter F-35 left the factory floor in 2006, and since then, more than 1,110 of these fighter planes have been delivered to the United States and its allies.

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After significant delays, the F-35 program made a complete production last year.

A single F -35 takes about 18 months to build, and this production plant can produce 156 fighters per year compared to the three variants – variants A, B and C are designed for conventional and based landing and landing on ships. It is a 24 -hour operation a day, with thousands of workers moving in and out of the factory one day given, surrounded by heavy machines.

The construction of the fighter plane begins with the assembly of its wing section. The construction of the cell moves and then descends the production line to an area where the four main pieces of the jet structure – the tail section, the wings, the central fuselage and the front fuselage – are brought together.

Maintaining a supply of stable parts is a big challenge

This is where the plane really begins to take its very recognizable shape. The small screens next to the plane show which country it is made: a walk on the production chain reveals the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Israel and Japan, to name a few -UNS.

F -35 pieces – of which there are thousands of them – come from around the world because the jet is a multinational project. One of the biggest challenges in the combatant’s construction, has learned Bi, is to ensure that an adequate supply of parts takes place towards the Fort Worth production site.

When the fighters reach the end of the production line, they are ready to be painted their gray color. Painting, depending on the company, is designed to reduce and absorb radar signals, which contributes to the furtive profile of the plane.

The paint process occurs in a separate building equipped with hangers which can be closed during the coloring process. A certain automation is involved in the construction of an F-35 jet, including during the construction of its wing structure and during the painting phase.

Each plane is then transported several times as part of the tests before it is ready to be sold.

The largest F-35 final assembly installation is located in Fort Worth, but there is a smaller plant in Italy and another in Japan. These sites highlight the worldwide nature of the operation, as planes are sent to the military in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The F-35 has been used in combat since its first flight almost 20 years ago. The American army has traveled the three variants of strike missions against terrorist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. The jet also received significant praise after Israel used it to make generalized air strikes in Iran last fall.