First Italian-built Dutch F-35A is on delivery

First Italian-built Dutch F-35A is on delivery.

Oct. 30, 2019 - Tomorrow, the Leeuwarden air base in the Netherlands will receive its first F-35A. The aircraft (AN-9) will take off early in the afternoon from the Final Assembly and Check-Out (FACO) at Cameri, Italy, and will arrive at destination at around 3.00 pm LT. The event will be broadcast live at this link.

AN-9 is the first Dutch Lightening II assembled in Italy and the ninth of the Netherlands’ 37 F-35A stealth fighters on order. The first eight aircraft are being assembled at Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth facility in the U.S. with two F-35s already used for testing at Edwards AFB, California, and the rest destined to Luke AFB for pilot training.

The remaining 28 F-35As for the Royal Netherlands Air Force will be built at Cameri that has already built 14 F-35s for the Italian armed forces. The order should expand with another 9 jets according to the plan recently announced by the Dutch government.

To date eleven F-35As and two F-35Bs have been delivered by FACO-Cameri, the only F-35 production facility located outside U.S.; six of them are currently stationed at Luke AFB, Arizona, and MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina, in accordance with the international pilot training programme, while seven are stationed at Amendola Air Force Base, Italy. In addition, a third Italian F-35B is currently conducting flight tests.

Written by Matteo Sanzani