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The US Air Force has assembled a plane it has dubbed "Frankenstein." It was built from parts of two crashed F-35 fighter jets. This saved the US about 63 million US dollars.
This is considered by the US Air Force as a new fighter.
"Frankenstein is fully operational and ready to support combat aviation," the US military wrote in a report published by CNN.
The F-35 is considered one of the most advanced fighter jets in the world. The manufacturer is Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman is one of the main partners and produces, among other things, wings and sensor systems for the aircraft. There are currently 890 F-35 aircraft in service worldwide.
In principle, it has always been possible to build a new aircraft from old parts, explained Scott Taylor, senior mechanical engineer at Lockheed Martin. He explains that "theoretically, all the parts of the aircraft can be disassembled and reassembled, but it's just never been done before."
"Frankenstein" consists of an F-35A, which suffered an engine failure and fire during a training mission in Florida in 2014.
The plane was badly damaged. Six years later, in 2020, another F-35A's nose gear failed during landing. That plane was also badly damaged. Normally a loss of millions of dollars for the Air Force.
One plane had its nose intact, the other had its tail intact. And so the engineers came up with the idea of building a new plane from old parts.
"Rather than retire both aircraft, teams made the bold decision in 2022 to remove the nose of one aircraft and attach it to the other aircraft to maximize savings and add a combat mission-capable aircraft," the Air Force explains in their report.
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