Customer Reviews

Ultimate Fighter: Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter

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We know how to build a stealth fighter. We know how to build a long-range agile fighter. We may even have a good way of building a fighter that can land and take off vertically. But trying to build a fighter that can do all three is very, very difficult."

But that's exactly what Lockheed Martin is building in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Perhaps trying to build is a better term. It looked like possible in 2001 when the contract was let. By 2004 the plane had gained weight and the lift wasn't quite there to take off vertically.

This is a great book. It is mostly on the details of the competitive designs being proposed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. For five years these two companies worked on the design of the fighters they were proposing, even to building flying prototypes. Reading the book gets you deep into the design effort, the philosophies of the two companies, and the politics involved. You know more about the F-35 than you imagined possible.

This is more of a coffee table book. There is very little excitement when reading through the book. The book is even less exciting than the BBC documentary of the same account of Boeing and Lockheed competing for the winning design. Most of all, you don't sense the human factor, the human drama in this book. Contrast this book with the Skunk Work book by Ben Rich and you can see the difference. Again, this is just a coffee table book that you look flip once in a while and not a book like Mr. Rich's that you go back to for inspirational ideas.