This is the most advanced painting facility in the world. It was created by Lockheed Martin for one single purpose: to make the F-35 Lighting II almost invisible to radar. As you can imagine, they don’t use spray cans.
The facility uses laser guides to apply radar absorbent composites to the fighter jet. The robotic laser guides and paint guns use an infra-red grid to triangulate their position in relation to the aircraft, applying just the right amount of “magic” paint at the perfect angle. According to Lockheed Martin, nobody in the world and in any industry has anything remotely approaching this.
Whatever. They got me at robotic laser guides and paint guns.
Troy MacDonald
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 5:00 PMWow.
lucasf
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 7:16 PMThats amazingly cool! I do get the feeling though that the video was made in such a way as to cleverly not tell you too much of anything, while making you think you’ve been told something.
Stefan Chochowski
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 12:06 AMCool. I always wondered how they painted the parts that we send to USA from Lovitt Technologies here in AUS. That is pretty cool.
EricG
Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 7:22 PMThis plane is drawing criticism from some investors in the JSF program. Australia and UK voices are saying that the plane is already outdated.
Some say the radar signature was understated.