Purple Suit Maintenance

Posted 25 May 2011
Photo by Michael D. Jackson

Seven US Airmen from the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin AFB, Florida, are currently at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland gaining first-hand experience maintaining the Marine Corps and Navy variants of the F-35 Lightning II. During their stay, the 33rd FW maintainers are learning how each branch of the service conducts aircraft maintenance. While the three F-35 variants are significantly different from each other, the Air Force F-35A, Marine Corps F-35B, and Navy F-35C are similar enough that maintainers do benefit from performing basic maintenance on all variants. Joint F-35 pilot and maintainer training will be conducted at Eglin. This second cadre of Air Force maintainers arrived at Pax River on 19 April 2011 and will be there through July.

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