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Transcript NARRATOR: As the U.S. military gears up for possible war with Iraq there is one thing it doesn't have that it almost certainly would like to—the Joint Strike Fighter. In this NOVA News Minute, Steve Mirsky looks at the military's next plane. For five years Boeing and Lockheed Martin battled it out for a $200 billion contract to build the new Joint Strike Fighter. SAM WILSON (NASA): I think we will look back at this time, at this competition between Boeing and Lockheed, and I think it will be remembered as "the great fighter war." NARRATOR: As shown on PBS's NOVA, the challenge of the competition was to build a single fighter for a fixed low cost that would serve the needs of three branches of the military. All three agreed the new plane, like the stealth fighter, had to be nearly invisible to radar and fly at supersonic speeds. But there was more. The Navy wanted a plane that could operate from an aircraft carrier, the Air Force, a nimble dogfighter, and the Marines, one that lands and takes off vertically like its Harrier jet. Perhaps the greatest engineering challenge of the "X" or experimental planes - vertical takeoff. This up-and-away capability has proven itself invaluable. The Harrier needs only 500 feet to take off, a third less than most fighters. The Boeing team decided on a direct lift method similar to the Harrier jet. With direct lift all of the thrust, or lift, comes from only one source - the plane's engine. The Lockheed team took a more radical approach. RICK REZABEK (Chief Engineer, Lockheed Martin): The lift fan has been an engineering challenge, because there has not been a lift fan built before. NARRATOR: The Lockheed lift fan system provides two sources of thrust, one from the engine and another from a fan in the front of the plane. The second source gives pilots more lift and an extra margin of safety.
In the end Lockheed Martin would win the battle of the X-planes.
Exactly why may never be known. The reasons are classified. I'm
Steve Mirsky.
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