Boeing’s X-32 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) demonstrator completed structural assembly at Palmdale at the end of August 1999. It is now preparing for static tests. The competing Lockheed Martin X-35 is due for roll-out shortly.

A recent major change for the Boeing X-32 is the swept, undernose engine intake which is now raked back, in a remarkably realistic computer image, aboard a carrier.

Both teams claim their respective contenders - a Boeing cutaway is seen here - are on time and within budget. It remains to be seen which will prove the most efficacious.

The Boeing JSF relies on vectored thrust similar to that used in the Harrier.

The first X-35A concept demonstration aircraft nearing completion at the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. By October 1999, the second demonstrator, designated X-35C, was in the assembly jig.

Artist’s impression of the US Marine Corps variant of the Lockheed Martin JSF.

The more conventional of the two JSF designs is Lockheed Martin’s X-35

The common core Pratt & Whitney F119 engine in the Lockheed Martin design will drive a lift fan at the forward end of the fuselage and a swivelling nozzle at the rear.

The Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) team has modified a Northrop Grumman-owned BAC One-Eleven Series 400, N162W, into an avionics test bed to fly the JSF’s active electronically scanned array (AESA) and demonstrate its all-weather, air-to-air and air-to-ground capabilities in urban and simulated-threat environments.