Martin-Baker concludes 600th US16E ejection seat for F-35 Program

Martin-Baker has announced the completion of the 600th US16E ejection seat for the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program.

The ejection seat is part of the Lockheed Martin LRIP XII contract destined for F-35A aircraft AF-244, which is being assembled at the company’s facility located in Fort Worth, Texas, US.

Martin-Baker noted that the company will have manufactured and delivered a further 180 US16E Seats for the F-35 programme by the end of this year.

In 2014, the US Air Force selected Lockheed Martin along with Northrop Grumman and BAE to develop and then produce the F-35A joint strike fighter (JSF) aircraft.

The F-35A will replace the airforce’s ageing fleet of F-16 Fighting Falcons and A-10 Thunderbolt II’s and bring with it an improved capability to survive in the advanced threat environment.

Martin-Baker will deliver the ejection seats to Lockheed Martin facility in Fort Worth, the Leonardo Final Assembly & Check-Out (FACO) facility in Cameri, Italy, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) FACO in Nagoya, Japan.

Set to be a further development of the company’s Mk16 range, the US16E ejection seat offers a balanced optimisation between key performance parameters such as safe terrain clearance limits, physiological loading limits, pilot boarding mass, and anthropometric accommodation ranges.

This would help to completely meet the F-35 Escape System requirements.

The seat meets the US Government defined Neck Injury Criteria (NIC) across the pilot accommodation range and will be common to all F-35 aircraft variants.

Last year, Martin-Baker delivered the 500th F-35 US16E ejection seat to Lockheed Martin. To date, the company has delivered more than 130 ejection seats to Lockheed Martin.

In February last year, Lockheed Martin rolled out the first operational F-35A Lightning II JSF for the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) at its facility in Fort Worth.