At 57, former naval aviator John Pettitt is old enough to appreciate the strategic value of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the next-generation combat aircraft. But he’s young enough to share in the chest thumping of his engineers over the major role they are playing in the stealth fighter’s development. “Across the board, they’re really jazzed,” says Pettitt of his team. “They think it’s cool. It’s really an amazing platform.”

John Pettitt, corporate lead executive in San Diego for Northrop Grumman and a former Navy pilot, will see his work force here grow to 5,000 by the end of the year. (photo/lambertphoto.com)

Pettitt flew single-seat light attack and strike fighter aircraft off numerous aircraft carriers during a 25-year naval career, but those planes pale in comparison to the F-35, the most advanced flying weapon system to be placed in the U.S. arsenal and sold to allied countries. The first production model of the Joint Strike Fighter is being assembled by Lockheed Martin at its plant in Fort Worth, Texas, with completion by the end of this year. The first test flight is scheduled for August 2006 at Edwards Air Force Base northeast of Los Angeles.

Pettitt is corporate lead executive in San Diego for Northrop Grumman Corp., a principal partner with Lockheed in the $18.9 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. The Los Angeles-based company is building the center fuselage of the aircraft and producing several other key elements of its integrated systems, a work share representing about 25 percent of the program.

Pettitt heads the San Diego division of Northrop Grumman’s Electronic Systems Sector. His local work force of 4,400 — growing to 5,000 by the end of the year — is involved in several defense contracts besides the F-35, including work for the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, naval surface and air forces, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. San Diego engineers have been developing the F-35’s advanced communications electronics.

Early in 2006, Northrop Grumman’s San Diego engineers will be testing the system that provides critical voice and data communications, navigation and identification functions using an aluminum and Fiberglas full-scale model of the F-35. The model, built by Advanced Technologies Inc. of Newport News, Va., will sit perched outside atop a 60-foot tower and attached to a positioner that will allow it to be tilted at different angles so that various radio signals can be received and transmitted outside of a laboratory environment.

This tower is part of Northrop Grumman’s new Advanced Communications Test Center, which includes a three-story, 50,000-square-foot building under construction in the Rancho Bernardo area that will house 120 workers. When complete, the center will test and demonstrate some of the most cutting-edge technologies used for defense programs, including the Joint Strike Fighter.

Northrop Grumman’s Advanced Communications Test Center, shown in this rendering, is under construction in Rancho Bernardo. It will test and demonstrate some of the most cutting-edge technologies used for defense programs, including the Joint Strike Fighter.

Pettitt, who has spent the last 10 years pursuing military contracts for his sector, understands the feelings his workers get over projects like the F-35. “Engineers are like everyone else,” he says. “When they work on something, they like to see a tangible product. Guys that work on satellites don’t have that. It’s different for airplanes and ships. You can see them, put your hands on them and admire your great engineering work.” Pettitt, a man who’s made 675 carrier landings, has a healthy respect for military systems and hardware and the people who develop them.

The Idaho native describes the F-35 as an “awesome platform.” “We have a large play in that airplane and we’re looking forward to getting it into the fleet.”

The single-engine Joint Strike Fighter is designed to replace the aging fighter inventories of the Navy, Air Force and Marines and the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. It will be manufactured in three configurations — a conventional takeoff and landing version for the Air Force, an aircraft carrier version for the Navy, and a short takeoff/vertical landing version for the Marine Corps, Air Force and U.K. forces.

John Kent, Lockheed’s F-35 spokesman, says 2,593 F-35s are planned. Other countries are expected to acquire the aircraft later. The price of a conventional F-35 is estimated at $45 million. The carrier and short takeoff/vertical landing versions are estimated at $55 million apiece. Twenty-three test aircraft will be built initially. Full-scale production is scheduled to start in 2007 and continue for another two decades or more.

A fully loaded aircraft weighs 60,000 pounds and includes 18,000 pounds of fuel and a range of bombs and missiles — all contained internally. With a range of 900 to 1,400 nautical miles, it can go longer without refueling than any other combat aircraft. Conventional fighters, says Kent, can’t match the top speed of the F-35 — Mach 1.6 or about 1,200 mph.

“What really sets the F-35 apart is that it’s a stealth fighter,” says Kent. “It has the ability to avoid detection from radar, on the ground or from another airplane. It’s very hard to detect, which brings with it enormous advantages, like the pilot saying to an enemy aircraft, ‘If I see you before you see me, you are going to have a bad day,’”

The Joint Strike Fighter also has what Kent calls “a lot of next-generation avionics and sensors.” “All of that information,” he says, “is fused by a powerful set of computers and is presented to the pilot in order of importance so that he’s not looking at a lot of sets and dials at one time. He has a flat screen in front of him and all the readouts are presented on that screen. He can call up any information he wants.”

The F-35 is designed to handle a tremendous amount of information from outside sources like satellites, ships, ground stations and other aircraft. “It has a lot of processing power and it can crunch that information for the use of its own pilot, or to redistribute it to other ‘friendlies’ to give a clear picture of the combat situation at hand,” says Kent.

In San Diego, home of the largest defense and military complex in the world, Northrop Grumman is one of many companies delivering from a federal defense budget that brought $13.4 billion in contracts and programs to the region in fiscal 2003. Pettitt says his local contracts amount to $1.2 billion. The company’s San Diego payroll exceeds $300 million annually and it is hiring. Engineer salaries here average about $80,000 a year.

President Bush is asking Congress for $419.3 billion for the Pentagon for fiscal 2005, which begins Oct. 1. That’s a 4.8 percent increase from the prior fiscal year, leading Pettitt to say San Diego’s defense economy is solid and will continue to grow.

Northrop Grumman has offices across the San Diego area, but it is constructing a 235,000-square-foot complex in Kearny Mesa that will ultimately house about 850 of its local work force, primarily software engineers, program managers and business managers. The complex consists of five buildings. “We’re worried that that’s not enough space so we’re looking at another building across the street,” says Pettitt.

Pettitt, who retired from the Navy in 1994 as a captain, sees a number of “bright spots” for Northrop Grumman in Bush’s proposed defense budget. “Particularly in information technology, space areas, unmanned vehicles,” he says. “Guess what? That’s the business we do in San Diego.”

“San Diego’s place in the defense industry has made a remarkable comeback from 10 or 15 years ago,” adds Pettitt. “A lot of that has to do with, one, the fact the Navy on the West Coast is based here and that’s not going to change. We’re looking at a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) this year, but I really don’t think the Navy’s presence is going to change that much here. Second, Spawar headquarters and the program officers that buy systems are located here. I don’t think that will change either. And San Diego is a hotbed for the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) market. We are set very nicely.”