Three Years Before Fly-off, Boeing And Lockheed Strike Fighters Duel By Chris Genna, Contributing Editor Farnborough, England - Their competing strike fighters won't fly off until 2001, but Boeing and Lockheed Martin engaged in Air Combat Maneuvering Wednesday in separate news conferences at the Farnborough International Air Show. Each company is building two concept demonstrator aircraft that will compete for what could be the largest defense contract in U.S. history, the Joint Strike Fighter program. Because the potential for Joint Strike Fighter sales is so huge, the enthusiasm index is high at both companies. Boeing President and Chief Operating Officer Harry Stonecipher said the JSF is "a must-win for Boeing." Lockheed Martin's JSF program director Henry Blot said the JSF is his company's "number one new business opportunity." Boeing's X-32 is a stubby delta wing with a box-like fuselage underneath. Lockheed Martin's X-35 is a more conventional wing and horizontal stabilizer design that shows a strong family resemblance to the F-22 Raptor, the air dominance fighter now in the Engineering and Manufacturing Development phase, undergoing flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base. Lockheed wants the U.S. government to know the family ties are more than superficial. Blot's pitch Wednesday emphasized the team Lockheed Martin has assembled to develop the X-35: its own Skunk Works, famous for exotic advanced designs; Northrop Grumman, makers of the B-2 flying wing and virtually every U.S. Navy combat plane; and British Aerospace, which developed the short-takeoff, vertical-lift Harrier fighter. Boeing has a team working on the X-32 as well; but since the project began, the Seattle-based company has assimilated its major partner, McDonnell Douglas. MD had been the third competitor for the JSF contract until it was eliminated late in 1996. Because the U.S. government wants the JSF built for just $28 million a plane, in 1994 dollars, Frank Statkus, Boeing's JSF program manager, spoke almost entirely about affordability. And commonality among the X-32's three versions goes hand-in hand with that. Fully 90 percent of the components will be interchangeable among the plain vanilla CTOL, or conventional takeoff and landing variant for the U.S. Air Force, the CV or carrier-operations version for the U.S. Navy, and the STOVL, or short takeoff, vertical landing version for the U.S. Marine Corps and British Royal Navy. That will simplify production as well as extend affordability into the life span of the X-32, Statkus said. If engine or wing or avionics improvements are needed in, say, 2020, such a service life extension project will be far cheaper if it can be implemented on all three versions rather than designing three different upgrades for the three different versions. Lockheed Martin's X-35 doesn't have that degree of commonality, though it's close. Blot said that if the CTOL version of the Lockheed design were taken as the base line, the STOVL version would use 80 percent of the same components, and the carrier version would use 75 percent. The difference is reflected in the way the two companies are approaching the concept demonstration planes they're building. Boeing will build the X-32A as the carrier-based plane and use that airframe to simultaneously demonstrate the capabilities of the basic Air Force version. The X-32B will have the direct thrust components and moveable intake of the Marines' STOVL version. Lockheed Martin, on the other hand, is building the X-35A as the basic CTOL plane, but with the wing-root bulkheads suitable for the U.S. Navy CV version's larger wing. The X-35B will be built, like Boeing's, as the STOVL version. But after the -A model demonstrates the capabilities of the basic version, it will be refitted with the larger wing of the Navy incarnation. But where Boeing will duct jet exhaust out the wings to provide vertical lift, along with a vectored-thrust rear nozzle, Lockheed Martin will use a vertical fan, mounted behind the cockpit and geared to the engine, to drive ambient air downward. Boeing's system is simpler and aids commonality because "no space in the fuselage is set aside for direct thrust gear," Statkus said. "The engines in both types will go in the plane the same way." Blot said Lockheed's system eliminates problems of scorching the flight deck, and of forcing the engine to ingest hot air, thereby losing power. Both companies' designs use the same engine, the Pratt & Whitney F119, the same engine now in use in the F-22. But the JSF designs use just one of the powerplants. Both companies, as expected given their Farnborough audience, emphasized the participation of European aerospace firms in their projects. Boeing is getting components from Marconi, Rolls Royce, Messier-Dowty, and Flight Refuelling, for example. But both Boeing's Statkus and Lockheed's Blot emphasized that no foreign companies would get JSF work as an "offset," a deal-sweetener for overseas sales.