F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter "JSF" Program: Background, Status, and Issues

The Defense Departments F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter JSF is one of three aircraft modernization programs in tactical aviation, the others being the Air Force F-22A fighter and the Navy FA-18EF fighterattack plane. In November 1996, the Defense Department selected two major aerospace companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to demonstrate competing designs for the JSF, a joint-service and multi-role fighterattack plane. Lockheed Martin won this competition and was selected to develop and produce the JSF, a family of aircraft including conventional take-off and landing CTOL, carrier-capable CV, and short take-off vertical landing STOVL versions for the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, the United Kingdom, as well as other allied services. Originally designated the Joint Advanced Strike Technology JAST program, the JSF program has attracted considerable attention in Congress because of concerns about its cost, effects on the defense industrial base, and implications for U.S. national security in the 21st century. The JASTJSF program evolved in response to the high cost of tactical aviation, the need to deploy fewer types of aircraft to reduce acquisition and operating costs, and projections of future threat scenarios and enemy capabilities. The programs rationale and primary emphasis is joint-service development of a next-generation multi-role strike aircraft that can be produced in affordable variants to meet different operational requirements. Developing an affordable tri-service family of CTOL Air Force and Navy variants and STOVL aircraft with different but similar combat missions poses major technological challenges.