The Lockheed Martin CATBird is a highly modified

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

737-330 designed as an

avionics Avionics (a portmanteau of ''aviation'' and ''electronics'') are the Electronics, electronic systems used on aircraft. Avionic systems include communications, Air navigation, navigation, the display and management of multiple systems, and the ...

flight testbed aircraft. The name is an adaptive acronym, from ''Cooperative Avionics Test Bed''; ''CATBIRD'' is Lockheed's ICAO-designated company callsign. The aircraft was modified in order to provide an economic means of developing and flight testing the avionics suite for the

Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...

F-35 Lightning II The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is an American family of single-seat, single-engine, supersonic Stealth aircraft, stealth strike fighters. A multirole combat aircraft designed for both Air superiority fighter, air superiority and att ...

. CATBird has a distinctive appearance, with an F-35's nose and a pair of small canards located just aft of the forward entrance doors. Inside, the aircraft is equipped with racks to hold all of F-35's avionics, as well as an F-35 cockpit. The aircraft was modified under contract by

BAE Systems Inc. BAE Systems Inc. (formerly BAE Systems North America) is an American company operating as an independent subsidiary of multinational defense, security, and aerospace company BAE Systems plc. The American subsidiary operates under a Special S ...

at their facility at the

Mojave Spaceport The Mojave Air and Space Port at Rutan Field is in Mojave, California, United States, at an elevation of . It is the first facility to be licensed in the United States for horizontal launches of reusable spacecraft, being certified as a spa ...

. Work began in December, 2003, and the aircraft began post-modification taxi tests in November 2006. First flight took place on January 23, 2007 at Mojave. After the initial flight test program conducted at Mojave, on March 2, 2007, the aircraft was ferried to Lockheed's

Fort Worth Fort Worth is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the county seat of Tarrant County, Texas, Tarrant County, covering nearly into Denton County, Texas, Denton, Johnson County, Texas, Johnson, Parker County, Texas, Parker, and Wise County, Te ...

facility for Phase 2 of the modification program, which would install the flight test stations and actual avionics and sensor systems to be tested."CATBird transitions to Lockheed for final systems installation", ''Aerotech News and Review'', 2007-03-09 In 2014 the CATBird's software test station was upgraded by

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

with Tech Refresh 2 hardware which gives the CATBird capability to test F-35 Block 3 Software.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lockheed Martin Catbird Mojave Air and Space Port Individual aircraft Aircraft first flown in 2007

See also

References