Lockheed

History

Catalog — Aircraft

• 1927

  Lockheed Vega

  The Lockheed Vega was a closed-cabin high-wing monoplane that Lockheed began building in 1927, and its reputation rested on the speed and range delivered by a wooden monocoque fuselage and a cantilever wing. Amelia Earhart crossed the Atlantic alone in one, and Wiley Post circled the globe twice with his.

• 1934

  Lockheed Model 10 Electra Sheet pending

  Variants (7)

  • Electra 10-A
  • Electra 10-B
  • Electra 10-C
  • Electra 10-D
  • Electra 10-E
  • KXL1
  • XC-35
• 1936

  Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior Sheet pending

  Variants (13)

  • C-40
  • C-40A
  • C-40B
  • C-40D
  • JO-1
  • JO-2
  • Model 12-25
  • Model 12-26
  • Model 12A
  • Model 12B
  • Model 212
  • R3O-2
  • XJO-3
• 1937

  Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra Sheet pending

  Variants (16)

  • C-111
  • Kawasaki Army Type 1 Freight Transport
  • Kawasaki Ki-56
  • Model 14
  • Model 14-08
  • Model 14H
  • Model 14H-2
  • Model 14-N
  • Model 14-N2
  • Model 14-N3
  • Model 14-WF62
  • Model 14-WG3B
  • Model C-14H-1
  • Tachikawa Type LO Transport Aircraft
  • Type LO Transport Aircraft
  • XR4O-1
• 1938

  Lockheed Hudson Sheet pending

  Variants (18)

  • A-28
  • A-28A
  • A-29
  • A-29A
  • A-29B
  • AT-18
  • AT-18A
  • C-63
  • Hudson I
  • Hudson II
  • Hudson III
  • Hudson IIIA
  • Hudson IV
  • Hudson IVA
  • Hudson V
  • Hudson VI
  • Model 414
  • PBO-1
• 1939

  Lockheed P-38 Lightning Sheet pending

  Variants (31)

  • F-4
  • F-4A
  • F-5A
  • F-5B
  • F-5C
  • F-5E
  • F-5F
  • F-5G
  • Lightning I
  • Lightning II
  • P-322-I
  • P-322-II
  • P-38
  • P-38B
  • P-38C
  • P-38D
  • P-38E
  • P-38E Floatplane
  • P-38F
  • P-38G
  • P-38H
  • P-38J
  • P-38K
  • P-38L
  • P-38M
  • TP-38L
  • XF-5D
  • XFO-1
  • XP-38
  • XP-38A
  • YP-38
• 1939

  Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar Sheet pending

  Variants (32)

  • 18-07
  • 18-08
  • 18-10
  • 18-14
  • 18-40
  • 18-50
  • 18-56
  • C-104
  • C-56
  • C-56A
  • C-56B
  • C-56C
  • C-56D
  • C-56E
  • C-57
  • C-57A
  • C-57B
  • C-57C
  • C-57D
  • C-59
  • C-60
  • C-60A
  • C-60C
  • C-66
  • R5O-1
  • R5O-2
  • R5O-3
  • R5O-4
  • R5O-5
  • R5O-6
  • XC-60B
  • XR5O-1
• 1941

  Lockheed Ventura Sheet pending

  Variants (15)

  • B-34
  • B-34A
  • B-34B
  • B-37
  • PV-1
  • PV-1P
  • PV-2C
  • PV-2D
  • PV-2 Harpoon
  • PV-2T
  • PV-3
  • Ventura I
  • Ventura II
  • Ventura IIA
  • Ventura V
• 1942

  Lockheed XP-49 Sheet pending

• 1943

  Lockheed Constellation Sheet pending

  Variants (85)

  • C-121A
  • C-121C
  • C-121G
  • C-121J
  • C-69
  • C-69A
  • C-69B
  • C-69C-1
  • C-69D
  • EC-121D
  • EC-121H
  • EC-121J
  • EC-121K
  • EC-121L
  • EC-121M
  • EC-121P
  • EC-121Q
  • EC-121R «BatCat»
  • EC-121T
  • JC-121C
  • JC-121K
  • L-049
  • L-051
  • L-084
  • L-1049
  • L-1049A
  • L-1049B
  • L-1049C
  • L-1049D
  • L-1049E
  • L-1049F
  • L-1049G
  • L-1049H
  • L-1049J
  • L-1149
  • L-1249A
  • L-1249B
  • L-1449
  • L-149
  • L-1549
  • L-1649A Starliner
  • L-1649B
  • L-249
  • L-349
  • L-449
  • L-549
  • L-649
  • L-649A
  • L-749
  • L-749A
  • L-749B
  • L-849
  • L-949
  • NC-121C
  • NC-121D
  • NC-121J
  • NC-121K
  • NC-121S
  • PO-1W
  • PO-2W Warning Star
  • R7O-1
  • R7V-1
  • R7V-1P
  • R7V-2
  • RC-121C
  • RC-121D
  • TC-121C
  • TC-121G
  • VC-121A
  • VC-121B
  • VC-121C
  • VC-121E
  • VC-121G
  • VC-121J
  • WQC-121N
  • WV-1
  • WV-2E
  • WV-2Q
  • WV-2 Warning Star
  • WV-3
  • XB-30
  • XC-69
  • XC-69E
  • XW2V-1
  • YC-121F
• 1944

  Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star Sheet pending

  Variants (22)

  • DF-80A
  • EF-80
  • ERF-80A
  • F-14A
  • F-80A
  • F-80B
  • F-80C
  • FP-80A
  • P-80A
  • P-80B
  • P-80C
  • P-80R
  • QF-80A/QF-80C/QF-80F
  • RF-80A
  • RF-80C
  • TO-1/TV-1
  • XF-14
  • XFP-80A
  • XP-80
  • XP-80A
  • XP-80B
  • YP-80A
• 1944

  Lockheed XP-58 Chain Lightning Sheet pending

• 1945

  Lockheed P-2 Neptune Sheet pending

  Variants (39)

  • AP-2E
  • AP-2H
  • CP-122 Neptune
  • DP-2H
  • EP-2H
  • Kawasaki P-2J
  • Neptune MR.1
  • NP-2E
  • NP-2H
  • OP-2E
  • P-15
  • P2V-1
  • P2V-2
  • P2V-2N «Polar Bear»
  • P2V-2S
  • P2V-3
  • P2V-3B
  • P2V-3C
  • P2V-3W
  • P2V-3Z
  • P2V-4
  • P2V-5
  • P2V-5F
  • P2V-5FD
  • P2V-5FE
  • P2V-5FS
  • P2V-5JF
  • P2V-6
  • P2V-6B
  • P2V-6F
  • P2V-6T
  • P2V-7
  • P2V-7B
  • P2V-7LP
  • P2V-7S
  • P2V-7U
  • RB-69A
  • XP2V-1
  • XP2V-2
• 1945

  Lockheed Big Dipper Sheet pending

• 1946

  Lockheed Saturn Sheet pending

• 1946

  Lockheed R6V Constitution Sheet pending

• 1948

  Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star Sheet pending

  Variants (24)

  • Aérospatiale Pégase
  • AT-33A
  • B.F.11
  • Boeing Skyfox
  • B.TF.11
  • DT-33A
  • DT-33B
  • DT-33C
  • Khodkar
  • L-245
  • NT-33A
  • QT-33A
  • RT-33A
  • Silver Star Mk 1
  • Silver Star Mk 2
  • T-33A
  • T-33AN/CT-133 Silver Star Mk 3
  • T-33B
  • TF-33A
  • TO-2
  • TP-80C
  • TV-2
  • TV-2D
  • TV-2KD
• 1949

  Lockheed F-94 Starfire Sheet pending

  Variants (11)

  • EF-94C
  • F-94A
  • F-94B
  • F-94C Starfire
  • F-94D
  • F-97A
  • YF-94
  • YF-94B
  • YF-94C
  • YF-94D
  • YF-97A
• 1949

  Lockheed XF-90 Sheet pending

• 1951

  Lockheed X-7 Sheet pending

• 1953

  Lockheed T2V SeaStar Sheet pending

• 1954

  Lockheed F-104 Starfighter Sheet pending

  Variants (21)

  • CF-104
  • CF-104D
  • F-104A
  • F-104B
  • F-104C
  • F-104D
  • F-104DJ
  • F-104F
  • F-104G
  • F-104H
  • F-104J
  • F-104N
  • F-104S
  • F-104S-ASA
  • F-104S-ASA/M
  • NF-104A
  • QF-104A
  • RF-104G
  • TF-104G
  • XF-104
  • YF-104A
• 1954

  Lockheed XFV Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • FV-2
  • XFO-1/XFV-1
• 1954

  Lockheed C-130 Hercules

  The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engined turboprop military transport aircraft, designed and built by Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin), with a high wing and a rear loading ramp. Conceived to carry troops, cargo and casualties out of unprepared strips, it is the main tactical airlifter of many armed forces and the longest continuously produced military aircraft in the United States: in 2024 it reached seventy years of uninterrupted manufacture since 1954, with more than 2,700 examples built as of June that year. More than forty variants, including the civil versions marketed as the Lockheed L-100, operate in more than sixty nations. It was also the fifth aircraft to complete fifty years of continuous service with its original primary customer, the United States Air Force (USAF), on a date the consulted sources place either in December 2006 or in 2007. Its origin lies in the Korean War, which exposed the inadequacy of the piston-engined transports inherited from the Second World War (Fairchild C-119, Douglas C-47, Curtiss C-46). On 2 February 1951 the USAF issued a General Operating Requirement to nine manufacturers: it called for capacity for 92 passengers, 72 combat-equipped troops or 64 paratroopers and, unlike transports derived from airliners, an aircraft conceived from the outset as a combat transport loading through a hinged ramp at the rear of the fuselage. The greatest innovation was the powerplant: the Allison T56 turboprop, developed specifically for the aircraft, which offered far more power for its weight than a piston engine and greater range than a turbojet. Lockheed, with a design team led by Willis Hawkins, won the contract for the Model 82 on 2 July 1951. The YC-130 prototype flew on 23 August 1954 from Burbank, California, and series production moved to Marietta, Georgia, where over 2,300 aircraft had been built through 2009. The configuration has barely changed since — high wing, high-flotation landing gear for dirt strips, a rear ramp equally useful for driving vehicles aboard and for airdropping cargo — and the evolution played out in engines and avionics. The initial C-130A (deliveries from December 1956) was followed by the C-130B of 1959, with auxiliary tanks in the centre wing section and four-bladed propellers; the longer-legged C-130E of 1962, with external tanks; the C-130H, with T56-A-15 engines and a redesigned outer wing, in production until 1996 and still the most widespread model; and the C-130J Super Hercules, launched by a Royal Air Force order of December 1994 and the only version in production today, with new engines, six-bladed propellers and digital avionics: 500 delivered to 26 operators in 22 countries as of March 2022. The family of specialised versions has no equivalent. The AC-130 gunship, born in Vietnam for close air support; the EC-130 for electronic warfare, airborne command and psychological operations (Commando Solo, Compass Call); the MC-130 for special operations, infiltrating, exfiltrating and refuelling special-operations helicopters in flight; the HC-130 long-range search and rescue aircraft of the USAF and the Coast Guard; the KC-130 tanker of the Marine Corps; the WC-130 weather reconnaissance version, with which the 53rd Squadron's Hurricane Hunters fly into tropical cyclones; the ski-equipped LC-130, the largest aircraft in the world able to land on snow and ice and the mainstay of Operation Deep Freeze in Antarctica; and the firefighting role through the Modular Airborne Firefighting System, which temporarily turns a Hercules into a 3,000-gallon airtanker. On the civil side, the L-100 — a C-130E without military equipment — flew in 1964 and was delivered in 114 examples up to 1992, with the LM-100J succeeding it from 2017. Its service record covers almost everything: forward air control over Laos and North Vietnam; the 1976 Entebbe raid, in which four Israeli Hercules flew more than 2,200 nautical miles almost entirely below 100 ft; the failed Operation Eagle Claw in Iran in 1980; and the 21 unarrested landings made by a KC-130F aboard the carrier Forrestal in 1963, still the record for the largest and heaviest aircraft to operate from an aircraft carrier. Australia was the first foreign user, in 1958. That mix of ruggedness, reconfigurability and longevity explains why the Hercules — the "Herk" of military slang — remains the yardstick by which tactical airlift is measured.

• 1955

  Lockheed U-2

  The Lockheed U-2 is a high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft: a single-seater with enormously long, narrow wings, one jet engine and a structure pared down to the lightest airframe its designers could get away with, conceived in the mid-1950s to solve a problem that had no other answer. The United States needed to know what was inside the Soviet Union — how many bombers, how many missiles, where — and there was no legal or safe way to find out. Lockheed's solution was very nearly a powered glider: take it above 21,000 metres, where fighters, radars and anti-aircraft batteries were believed unable to reach it, and hang beneath it a camera able to resolve objects a few centimetres across from that height. Seventy years later it is still flying, which none of its creators would have bet on. The programme grew out of a request for proposals written in 1953 by Air Force officer John Seaberg for an aircraft able to operate at 70,000 feet over its target. The competition, code-named "Bald Eagle", was deliberately aimed at small companies; Lockheed heard about it and submitted an unsolicited design. Its author was Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, the engineer behind the P-38 and the P-80, who worked in a separate division informally known as the Skunk Works. His CL-282 gave up conventional landing gear and combat load factors in exchange for altitude. The Air Force rejected it in June 1954 — General Curtis LeMay walked out of the presentation saying he had no interest in an aeroplane with no wheels and no guns — but a group of civilian advisers, among them Edwin Land and James Killian, persuaded President Eisenhower that the aircraft should exist and that the CIA, not the military, should fly it: a military aircraft over Soviet territory could be read as an act of war. Approval came in November 1954 and the contract, $22.5 million for the first twenty aircraft, in March 1955. Johnson delivered on time and under budget. Flying the U-2 was never comfortable. At operating altitude the margin between never-exceed speed and stall speed was about ten knots: the "coffin corner", where straying above or below meant losing the airflow over wing or tail. Down low, by contrast, dense air and the absence of powered controls made it brutally hard work, and the ground effect of those wings meant it refused to land until fully stalled half a metre above the runway. Bicycle gear instead of a tricycle arrangement, two auxiliary wheels — the "pogos" — that drop away on take-off, titanium skids at the wingtips, and a chase car racing down the runway calling out the pilot's remaining height. In a cockpit that is only partly pressurised, the pilot wears a pressure suit and breathes pure oxygen for an hour before take-off to purge nitrogen from the blood; on an eight-hour mission he may lose up to 5% of his body mass. Its operational history is the history of the century. On 4 July 1956 a U-2 overflew the Soviet Union for the first time; the photographs of the following years showed that the "bomber gap" agonising Washington did not exist. On 1 May 1960 an SA-2 missile brought down Francis Gary Powers's aircraft near Sverdlovsk, the weather-research cover story collapsed when Khrushchev revealed the pilot was alive, Eisenhower refused to apologise and the Paris summit fell apart before it began. In October 1962 it was a U-2 that photographed the Soviet missiles in Cuba, and another U-2 that was shot down over the island with Major Rudolf Anderson aboard, at the tensest moment of the crisis. Then came the Taiwanese pilots of the Black Cat Squadron over mainland China, Vietnam, the Middle East, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. The platform was remade several times. The original U-2A was followed by models with more powerful engines, two-seat versions, air-refuellable variants and even one adapted for carrier operations; in 1967 came the U-2R, an airframe nearly 30% larger, and in 1981 a third production batch christened TR-1A and later returned to the U-2R designation. Since the mid-1990s the fleet has flown as the U-2S with the General Electric F118 turbofan, with the two-seat TU-2S as trainer, while NASA operates two ER-2s for atmospheric science and Earth observation. The U-2 outlived the SR-71, retired in 1998, and a very long list of announced and then cancelled retirement dates: 2007, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2025, 2026. It remains the only manned high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft in the United States Air Force, and its latest death sentence is not firm either.

• 1957

  Lockheed JetStar Sheet pending

  Variants (9)

  • AAI FanStar
  • C-140A
  • C-140B
  • C-140C
  • JetStar 731
  • JetStar I
  • JetStar II
  • T-40
  • VC-140B
• 1957

  Lockheed L-188 Electra

  First flown on December 6, 1957, the Lockheed L-188 Electra was the first large turboprop airliner built in the United States. Its passenger career proved short, yet the sturdy airframe went on to a long second life hauling cargo and fighting fires.

• 1959

  Lockheed CL-475 Sheet pending

• 1962

  Lockheed A-12 Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • A-12 Trainer «Titanium Goose»
  • M-21
• 1962

  Lockheed XV-4 Hummingbird Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • XV-4A
  • XV-4B
• 1962

  Lockheed XH-51 Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • Model 286
  • XH-51A
  • XH-51A Compound
  • XH-51N
• 1963

  Lockheed YF-12 Sheet pending

  Variants (3)

  • F-12B
  • YF-12A
  • YF-12C
• 1963

  Lockheed C-141 Starlifter Sheet pending

  Variants (4)

  • C-141A
  • C-141B
  • C-141C
  • SOLL II
• 1964

  Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird

  The Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" was the fastest and highest-flying reconnaissance aircraft ever to enter operational service: a two-seat machine able to cross continents above Mach 3 and beyond 80,000 feet, built to photograph hostile territory with no practical way of being intercepted. It came from Lockheed, and specifically from the advanced projects division run by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson that the world knows as the Skunk Works. It matters because it solved, with early-1960s technology, a problem that looked intractable: sustaining flight for hours at speeds where air friction heats an aircraft's skin to hundreds of degrees. The answer was an airframe built almost entirely of titanium, a fuel of its own (JP-7) so reluctant to ignite that a chemical starter was needed, a navigation system that tracked stars in daylight, and a powerplant — the Pratt & Whitney J58 with its translating inlet spike — that behaved in cruise more like a ramjet than a turbojet. The lineage predates the SR-71 itself. In 1957 the CIA was looking for a less vulnerable successor to the U-2 and hired Lockheed for project Archangel, which produced the A-12, first flown in April 1962. The Air Force asked for its own version: longer, heavier and crewed by two, the Lockheed R-12, which official designation turned into SR-71. The first aircraft flew on 22 December 1964 at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale with Bob Gilliland at the controls, and the type entered service at Beale AFB in January 1966. It flew from Kadena, Okinawa, over North Vietnam, Laos and North Korea from 1968, and from RAF Mildenhall over the Baltic and the Barents Sea from 1976; missions also covered Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya and the Middle East. None was ever shot down despite roughly 800 surface-to-air missiles fired at Blackbirds over Vietnam alone: the standard evasion was simply to accelerate. Of the 32 airframes built, twelve were lost in accidents and one crew member died. The Air Force retired the type in 1989, citing cost and the redundancy brought by satellites and unmanned aircraft; Congress funded the return of three aircraft in 1994, and military service ended for good in 1998. NASA, which flew the Blackbird as a high-speed research testbed at Dryden, closed the story with a final flight on 9 October 1999. The absolute speed and altitude records it set in July 1976 still stand.

• 1964

  Lockheed D-21 Sheet pending

• 1967

  Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne Sheet pending

• 1968

  Lockheed C-5 Galaxy Sheet pending

  Variants (6)

  • C-5A
  • C-5B
  • C-5C
  • C-5D
  • C-5 Shuttle Carrier
  • L-500
• 1970

  Lockheed L-1011 TriStar Sheet pending

  Variants (7)

  • L-1011-1
  • L-1011-100
  • L-1011-150
  • L-1011-200
  • L-1011-250
  • L-1011-50
  • L-1011-500
• 1972

  Lockheed S-3 Viking Sheet pending

  Variants (13)

  • Aladdin Viking
  • Beartrap Viking
  • Calypso Viking
  • ES-3A Shadow
  • Gray Wolf Viking
  • KS-3A
  • KS-3B
  • NASA Viking
  • Orca Viking
  • Outlaw Viking
  • S-3A
  • S-3B
  • US-3A
• 1977

  Lockheed Have Blue Sheet pending

• 1981

  Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk

  The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk was the world's first operational aircraft designed from the outset around low observability: a single-seat, subsonic, twin-engined attack aircraft built by Lockheed's Skunk Works division and flown exclusively by the United States Air Force. Its significance lies not in its performance, which was modest, but in proving that an aeroplane could cross dense air defences without being seen, a demonstration that reshaped late twentieth-century air doctrine. The idea reached Burbank by an improbable route. In 1962 the Soviet mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev published "Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction", showing that the strength of a radar return depends on an object's edge configuration rather than on its size, extending earlier theoretical work by the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld. The logical conclusion, that even a large aircraft could shrink its signature by exploiting the principle, was unusable in the 1960s, because the resulting shape would be aerodynamically unstable and no flight computer then existed to tame it. When the Lockheed analyst Denys Overholser came across the paper in the 1970s, computing had caught up. Skunk Works modelled the "Hopeless Diamond" in 1975, and in 1976 DARPA contracted two demonstrators under the code name Have Blue, assembled from T-38A engines, F-16 fly-by-wire systems, A-10 landing gear and C-130 environmental systems for 35 million dollars for the pair. They first flew on 1 December 1977 and both were lost in crashes, but the test data validated the concept. The operational programme, Senior Trend, was approved on 1 November 1978 and awarded to Lockheed Advanced Development Projects in Burbank, led by Ben Rich with Alan Brown as project manager. Against Kelly Johnson's rounded proposal, Rich argued for flat surfaces, or facets, arranged by an in-house program called "Echo" so as to scatter over 99% of the radar energy painting the aircraft. The first YF-117A, serial 79-10780, flew from Groom Lake on 18 June 1981, only 31 months after the full-scale development decision; initial operating capability followed in October 1983. Five full-scale development aircraft and 59 production machines were built, the last delivered on 3 July 1990. (The Spanish-language Wikipedia dates the first prototype flight to 1982.) Faceting came at a cost. The aircraft is unstable about all three principal axes and depends on quadruple-redundant fly-by-wire controls; it has no afterburners and carries no radar of its own, is clad in almost a ton of radar-absorbent material supplied as flat sheets, and vents its exhaust through a slit-shaped, non-circular tail pipe that mixes hot gas with cool ambient air. Its radar cross-section is around 0.001 m². In exchange it is confined to subsonic speeds and to manoeuvrability far below that of any fighter, irrelevant in a dedicated attack aircraft, which makes its "F" designation all the more striking. It had no air-to-air capability; project manager Alan Brown attributed the letter to General Robert J. Dixon, who believed the top-notch fighter pilots the aircraft required would be more easily attracted to a fighter designation than to a bomber or attack one. The entire fleet operated in secret from Tonopah Test Range Airport, initially under the 4450th Tactical Group. The USAF denied the aircraft's existence until 10 November 1988, when Assistant Secretary of Defense J. Daniel Howard produced a grainy photograph at a Pentagon press conference. Its combat debut came in the 1989 invasion of Panama; its reputation was made in the 1991 Gulf War, with roughly 1,300 sorties against what the US military described as 1,600 high-value targets, and 42 aircraft dropping 2,077 bombs. On 27 March 1999 over Serbia, an S-125 Neva battery of the 3rd Battalion, 250th Air Defence Missile Brigade under Colonel Zoltán Dani downed F-117 82-0806, callsign "Vega 31"; the pilot ejected and was recovered hours later, and the wreckage was left where it fell. It remains the type's only combat loss. Retirement, brought forward to 2008 to fund more F-22s, did not end the story: most airframes went into recallable storage at Tonopah and several still fly on training and test work.

• 2006

  Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

  The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine fifth-generation stealth fighters conceived not as one aircraft but as a common design rendered in three versions that share airframe, powerplant, sensors and mission system, and differ in how they take off and land. The F-35A operates conventionally from a runway; the F-35B takes off in a short roll and lands vertically by means of a shaft-driven lift fan and a swivelling exhaust nozzle; the F-35C carries a larger folding wing, strengthened landing gear and an arresting hook for catapult operations from aircraft carriers. That premise — a single programme replacing the F-16, the A-10, the AV-8B Harrier II and the F/A-18 Hornet at once, across three American services and the air arms of a dozen partner nations — accounts for both its industrial reach and its troubles. The aircraft grew out of the Joint Strike Fighter programme, which in 1996 pitted the Boeing X-32 against the Lockheed Martin X-35. On 26 October 2001 the Pentagon picked the X-35, and the first production-standard F-35, AA-1, flew on 15 December 2006 at Fort Worth. Between selection and service entry came a weight crisis that forced a redesign of the STOVL version, a cost breach that triggered a full restructuring of the programme, and a schedule that slipped by years. The Marine Corps declared initial operational capability in July 2015, the Air Force in August 2016 and the Navy in February 2019. Its defining quality is not speed — capped at Mach 1.6, roughly 1,960 km/h — but the pairing of low observability with a sensor fusion that blends the AN/APG-81 AESA radar, the six-camera AN/AAQ-37 distributed aperture system, the AN/AAQ-40 electro-optical targeting sensor and an integrated electronic warfare suite, all presented to the pilot on a single touchscreen and on the visor of a helmet that replaces the conventional head-up display. In stealth configuration weapons ride in two internal bays; when the threat permits, six external stations raise the load to about 8,160 kg on the A and C models. With more than a thousand aircraft delivered and customers on three continents, the F-35 has become the backbone of Western combat aviation and, at the same time, the most expensive weapons programme in history. Its development continues: the Block 4 capability package and the Technology Refresh 3 avionics upgrade — whose delays halted deliveries for a year between 2023 and 2024 — define the aircraft that will fly for decades to come.

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  Lockheed AQM-60 Kingfisher Sheet pending

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  Lockheed Air Express Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • 3 Air Express
  • Air Express Special
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  Lockheed Explorer Sheet pending

  Variants (2)

  • 4 Explorer
  • 7 Explorer
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  Lockheed P-3 Orion Sheet pending

  Variants (58)

  • AP-3C
  • CP-140A Arcturus
  • CP-140 Aurora
  • EP-3
  • EP-3A
  • EP-3B
  • EP-3E Aries
  • EP-3E Aries II
  • EP-3E SIGINT
  • EP-3J
  • NP-3A
  • NP-3B
  • NP-3C
  • NP-3D
  • NP-3E
  • OP-3C
  • Orion 21
  • P-3A
  • P-3A (CS)
  • P-3 AEW&C
  • P-3AM
  • P-3B
  • P-3C
  • P-3C AIP
  • P-3C BMUP
  • P-3C CDU
  • P-3C CUP
  • P-3CK
  • P-3C SUDS
  • P-3C UIP
  • P-3C Update I
  • P-3C Update II
  • P-3C Update II.5
  • P-3C Update III
  • P-3C Update IV
  • P-3F
  • P-3G
  • P-3H
  • P-3K
  • P-3K2
  • P-3M
  • P-3N
  • P-3P
  • P-3T
  • P-3W
  • P-7
  • RP-3A
  • RP-3C
  • RP-3D
  • TAP-3C
  • TP-3A
  • UP-3A
  • UP-3C
  • UP-3D
  • VP-3A
  • VP-3T
  • WP-3A
  • WP-3D
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  Lockheed Aequare Sheet pending

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  Lockheed Altair Sheet pending

  Variants (7)

  • 8D Altair
  • 8G Altair
  • DL-2A
  • Sirius 8 Special
  • XRO-1
  • Y1C-23
  • Y1C-25
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  Lockheed Model 9 Orion Sheet pending

  Variants (11)

  • Orion 9
  • Orion 9A Special
  • Orion 9B
  • Orion 9C
  • Orion 9D
  • Orion 9D-1
  • Orion 9E
  • Orion 9F
  • Orion 9F-1
  • Orion-Explorer
  • UC-85
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  Lockheed Model 8 Sirius Sheet pending

  Variants (5)

  • DL-2
  • Lockheed 8 Sirius
  • Sirius 8
  • Sirius 8A
  • Sirius 8C
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  Lockheed Little Dipper Sheet pending

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  Lockheed YP-24 Sheet pending

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  Lockheed MQM-105 Aquila Sheet pending

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  Lockheed YO-3 Quiet Star Sheet pending

  Variants (5)

  • Q-Star
  • QT-1 Quiet Thruster
  • QT-2
  • QT-2PC Prize Crew
  • YO-3A