By JAMES DARCY
NAS Patuxent River Public Affairs Department

PATUXENT RIVER NAVAL AIR STATION, MD-Maj. Art "Turbo" Tomassetti made Marine Corps history June 30 when he became the first Marine to fly the Lockheed Martin X-35B, the short-takeoff-vertical-landing (STOVL) variant of Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) concept demonstrator. At Lockheed's hover pit facility in Palmdale, Calif., Tomassetti completed three "press-up" maneuvers in the aircraft, rising vertically off the deck into a stable hover about twenty feet off the ground, then settling back down for a vertical landing.

Tomassetti is the government's lead test pilot for the X-35 and is assigned to Pax River's Strike Aircraft Test Squadron. With the June 30 flight he also becomes the only military pilot to have flown all three variants of the X-35; besides the STOVL-capable X-35B, he has also piloted the conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) A-model and the carrier-variant C-model, which he ferried to Pax River for testing in February.

Lockheed is competing for the JSF engineering, manufacturing and development (EMD) contract, under which they would provide JSF variants to the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, as well as the British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The X-35B demonstrates the STOVL design that Lockheed would provide to the Marines and United Kingdom.

"With my three press-ups today I am convinced that we are on the right track," Tomassetti said June 30 after his flights. "No matter how many times you do it, hovering a jet airplane always feels a little magical, and today was no exception. My compliments to the entire team for putting together a very nice hovering machine."

Lockheed Martin still has contingency plans to bring the X-35B to Pax River for further testing toward the end of July, following flights at Palmdale and at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. Tomassetti confirmed that the joint government-industry test team was on pace to bring the aircraft back east to his home air station if necessary.

"There are certainly benefits to working STOVL operations at Pax River, where the military typically does all of its carrier suitability and STOVL testing," he said. "All of the expertise is there for those kinds of operations."

Lockheed Martin has taken an innovative approach to generating lift for STOVL flight, mounting a counter-rotating lift fan in the center of the airframe to generate cool-air lifting forces. The fan is turned by a drive shaft from the Pratt & Whitney JSF119-611 engine, which powers all of the JSF concept demonstrator aircraft.

According to Lockheed Martin, the lift fan combines with an articulating rear duct and control nozzles in the wing to generate nearly 40,000 pounds of lifting power.

Before taking the controls for the first time, Tomassetti had gained insight into how the system would function with hundreds of hours spent in an X-35B simulator. "The actual aircraft appears to be behaving like it does in the simulator," he said following his first flights. "One of the big goals coming out of this phase of the program is being able to predict and replicate your data," he added.

Tomassetti has more than 1,600 hours flying AV-8B Harriers as a test pilot and in the Fleet, and understands as well as anyone the challenges of vertical flight. "The Harrier is a very pilot dependent airplane; you are always making small adjustments just to fly the plane. There's no digital flight control system in the airplane, so everything you do is manual. … It takes a lot of training and a lot of practice to stay good at it."

By contrast, he said, the X-35B employs digital flight controls and on-board computers to lighten pilot workload, enabling the aircraft to be flown closer to its limits in safety and relative ease. "They are really on the right track to making it a forgiving aircraft," he said. "And the less you have to worry about flying the airplane, the more you can focus on the combat part of the mission."

Upon completion of X-35 flight tests later this year, Tomassetti will leave Strike to attend the Marine Corps' Command and Staff College at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va. In the meantime, he is soaking up the experience of flying a totally unique aircraft. "This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, considering how infrequently we have X-airplanes that actually have humans in the cockpit," he said. "To take part in an evolution like this is just unbelievable."

-USN-