FCP Visions
To serve and support the men, women, families and mission of Luke Air Force Base
Spring 2109
F-35 program growing at Luke AFB BY CAROLYN DRYER FCP Editor
In May 2015, Luke Air Force Base’s 56th Fighter Wing conducted a change of mission ceremony, officially including the F-35 in the wing’s mission statement: “To train the world’s greatest F-35 and F-16 fighter pilots.” F-35 training began at Luke just over a year after the 56th Fighter Wing received its first F-35A in 2014. Pilots and maintainers from Australia, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands, Japan and Israel are at various training stages at Luke. Luke AFB is the second base flying F-35s in Arizona after the stand-up of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma. Eventually, the 56th Fighter Wing will be home to 144 F-35s. After 33 years in the Air Force, Art Cameron retired at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., as a brigadier general in 2009, and immediately found an opening at Lockheed-Martin. Cameron speaks to a lot of different organizations about his work as F-35 operations director for Lockheed-Martin, which manufactures the fifth-generation fights job site is the F-35 training center at Luke Air Force Base. Why at Luke? Cameron said, “I wanted to be on the leading edge of technology. But more important, I wanted to work with good Airmen again. I was a maintenance operations commander at Luke, and I always wanted the opportunity to come back to the West Valley and the F-35 was that opportunity.” He returned to the West Valley in better place in the world. “Every day I go to work is a blessing,” he said.
Better banking starts here.
Left, An F-35A Lightning II jet fighter soars over the West Valley during a training flight after takeoff from Luke Air Force Base. Right, Art Cameron is the F-35 operations director for Lockheed-Martin. He retired from the Air Force as a Brigadier General in 2009. (Photos courtesy Lockheed-Martin)
Cameron said Luke is the largest fighter wing in the world and also the largest F-35 base. It trains 95 percent of fighter pilots. “And nobody but us is training brand new F-35,” he said. He said he was the first hire by Lockheed-Martin. But since he’s been on the job, 500 additional people have been hired, 97 percent of which are veterans. Twenty F-35 pilots train other pilots in the aircraft. Cameron’s team also takes care of data administra-
tion for Luke. And the team is growing, he said, to about 700 in the next couple years. Nine companies are doing F-35 work at the base, he said. Pilots from every country that has purchased the F-35 also train at Luke. That is, all except the United Kingdom, which purchased the F-35 variant hover craft, which is the same F-35 the U.S. Marines use. That particular training base is in North Carolina.
F-35...continued on page 10
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