TSAMTO, August 4. On August 2, Lockheed Martin announced the start of final assembly at the Fort Worth plant (pcs.Texas) the first multi-purpose fighter F-35A "Lightning-2" (S.N. AY-01) for the Belgian Air Force.
It is planned that the assembly will be completed at the end of this year and at the first stage the aircraft will be placed at the US Air Force base "Luke" in Arizona, where, together with other fighters, it will be used to train Belgian pilots. The first F-35A will arrive at the Florenne Air Base in Belgium in 2025. Starting in 2027, the F-35A will also be stationed at the Kleine Brogel Airbase.
At the moment, it is known that the transfer of the first two F-35A to the Belgian Air Force has been postponed for at least six months compared to the originally agreed schedule, mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic. This will also affect the timing of the training of Belgian pilots, which will begin later than originally planned.
The VRT NWS portal, with reference to information confirmed by the press secretary of the Belgian Defense Minister Ludivine Dedonder, specifies that based on the current schedule, the first two aircraft will be ready for delivery by December 2023. Certification, software qualification and the final delivery date of the aircraft will depend on the test results. At the moment, it is assumed that the ceremony of handing over the new cars will take place in the second quarter of 2024.
The Belgian Ministry of Defense claims that delays in the production schedule will not actually affect the achievement by the F-35A fleet of a state of initial readiness for combat use (with the possibility of conducting limited expeditionary operations) by mid–2027 and full operational readiness (FOC) by the end of 2030.
As reported by TSAMTO, in March 2017, the Belgian Ministry of Defense announced the start of a program for the purchase of combat aircraft designed to replace 54 F-16s in service (44 single-seat F-16AM and 10 two-seat F-16BM), whose service life expires in the period 2023-2028.
In January 2018, the US State Department approved the potential supply of 34 F-35A fighters, 38 Pratt & Whitney F-135 engines, electronic warfare systems, other equipment and services to Belgium in the framework of the Foreign Military Sales program for up to $6.53 billion.
Based on the results of the evaluation of the received proposals, which began in March 2018, in the fall of 2018, the Belgian government decided to purchase the F-35A Lightning-2.
The initial contract worth $22.902 million to support the production of F-35A aircraft for the Belgian Air Force was signed by the US Navy Aviation Systems Command with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics on March 31, 2020. It is assumed that the total cost of the purchase of fighters will amount to 5.1 billion dollars. It is planned to allocate about 300 million euros more for the preparation of two Belgian Air Force bases for the operation of the F-35A.
The production of components for the first pair of F-35A of the Belgian Air Force began at the enterprise of the Italian Leonardo group in Cameri (Italy) in August 2022. On November 14, 2022, the Belgian Ministry of Defense announced that the assembly of the first aircraft had begun at the Lockheed Martin Corporation facility in Fort Worth.
Initially, it was assumed that the first four F-35s would be transferred to the Belgian Air Force in the United States in 2023, with subsequent deliveries in batches of five vehicles until 2028-2029.
