F-35 on runway. Source: Wikimedia Commons, 2013, U.S. Air Force, Ministerie van Defensie, CC BY-SA 4.0

Finland’s first F-35 stealth fighter was unveiled on December 16, in Fort Worth, Texas, in the United States.

The event will be attended by, among others, Minister of Defence Antti Häkkänen and Air Force Commander Timo Herranen.

Finland’s first F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter will be unveiled today in a ceremonial ceremony in the United States.

This is a rollout celebration organised for each country that has acquired fighter jets, which precedes the fighter’s actual deployment. The first fighters will arrive in Finland at the end of next year, once the pilots have been trained.

The event, which will be held at Lockheed Martin’s factories in Fort Worth, Texas, will be attended by, among others, Minister of Defence Antti Häkkänen and Air Force Commander Timo Herranen.

President Alexander Stubb was originally scheduled to attend the event, but he had to cancel his visit due to the peace talks in Ukraine.

There it is. On December 8, Lockheed Martin, the manufacturer of the F-35 aircraft, released images of the first test flight of the Finnish fighter.

The celebration was hosted by Greg Ulmer, the head of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, the company that manufactures aircraft for the American defence giant.

The main star is the first Finnish F-35 multi-role fighter, designated JF-501, which will be presented to the public during the event.

The aircraft was completed in final assembly at the end of October, when photos of it before repainting were released.

The aircraft made its first flight on Monday, December 8, when Lockheed Martin test pilot Carlton “Puff” Wilson took the aircraft into the sky in Texas from the air base connected to the F-35 factory.

A total of eight Finnish aircraft are being completed in final assembly. After repainting, they will undergo a thorough quality assurance process, in which the company’s test pilots will fly the aircraft in Texas.

The final test will be performed by a U.S. Air Force test pilot, who will give final approval for commissioning.

The aircraft will then be flown to Ebbing Air Force Base in Arkansas, where Finnish pilots undergoing training will have their first contact with its controls next spring.

In total, Finland has ordered 64 F-35 fighters, which will replace the old F-18 Hornet fighters within the next decade at the latest.

The F-35 is the most expensive weapons acquisition in Finland’s history. The total price tag is approximately ten billion euros.

About half of that consists of the aircraft themselves, which cost approximately 80 million euros per unit. The remaining costs come from maintaining the aircraft and the construction work they require at Finnish bases.

The aircraft’s type designation JF stands for Joint Fighter. This is the name given to the aircraft in Finland, where the word joint (Finnish for “joint” or “yhtes-”) emphasises its importance to all branches of the Finnish armed forces.

The F-35 is a so-called fifth-generation stealth fighter. This means that the aircraft is poorly visible to enemy radar, which increases its freedom of action.

Thanks to its equipment, the F-35 is also an effective reconnaissance aircraft that can provide real-time information about the battlefield to the entire armed forces.

As a multi-role fighter, the aircraft’s basic armament includes both air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles.

Source: Ilta Sanomat (in Finnish)