The F-35 Comes to Life: Special Visit to Factory – Inside Building an F-35

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By Kris Osborn – Warrior Maven

(Ft. Worth, Texas) — Filled with stacks of fuselage panels, engine components and a wide assortment of pipes, electronics and avionics, the spralling F-35 construction facility in Ft. Worth, Texas, resembles a small city filled with engineers, mechanics, electricians and airplanes at various stages of construction.

While some stations include vertically-hanging airplane wings, rudders, pipes and intricate collections of wires running through the fuselage, others contain little more than an assortment of seemingly disconnected small parts. Farther along the mile-long construction strip, heavily trafficked by workers, builders and engineers, there are bays with nearly completed F-35 with a light-green exterior. These “about to be finished” F-35s, roll into a separate environmentally-controlled hanger where they await a final coat of blended gray paint – giving the aircraft its color.

After watching a certain amount of varying airplane structures and configurations, to include pipes, computer parts and larger components such as wings, tails, rudders, engines or a mounted 25mm cannon – an observer can begin to discern the differences between the variants. The F-35C is the largest, built with a larger wingspan and tail for carrier landings; the F-35A includes a visible fuselage/wing-mounted 25mm cannon buried beneath a stealthy, rounded exterior blending the weapon into the body of the plane; the F-35B is, developers say, the most expensive and technically complicated of the group.

During construction of an F-35B, a visible “LiftFan” is engineered into a forward part of the center fuselage just behind the pilot to enable massive downward vertical thrust. Horsepower is sent to the LiftFan from the main engine through a “spiral belevel gear system,” Rollys Royce information states.

This horsepower, when combined with the LiftFan, generates the downward thrust necessary to enable the “hover” ability and vertical landing. An F-35B has what looks like an square door or opening on top of the fuselage behind the pilot and above the lift fan to maximize downward air flow. Engineers explain that the massive thrust, sufficient to propel the aircraft up to speeds beyond the sound barrier, results from a four fold process. Air ducts on either side of the nose “suck” in air to the engine, the air is then compressed before being ignited with gas — generating what looks like a controlled explosion of fire coming out of the back. The force generated through this process, enables the speed, maneuverability and acceleration of the aircraft.