Marietta’s just one stop on fighter’s path to flight

The F-35 Lightning II, the military’s next-generation jet fighter, will be built by tens of thousands of people who work for 900 suppliers in nine countries and 45 states, including Georgia.

The Lockheed Martin factory in Marietta is just one destination on the jet’s global production jaunt.

But it’s part of Lockheed Martin’s time-tested strategy to share the manufacturing wealth to garner political support for the $300 billion project, according to defense expert John Pike.

Defense contractors “spread the work around in order to maintain congressional support,” Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, said last week. “Any congressional district that doesn’t have one of these contracts hasn’t bothered to pick up the phone. They’re not hard to get.”

Ten workers started building F-35 center wings in Marietta late last month. By 2016, when Lockheed expects to churn out a plane a day, more than 600 men and women could be welding and riveting wings in Cobb County.

Not all will be new hires. Roughly 175 employees will switch over from F-22 Raptor production as it winds down. In all, 7,800 people work at the massive factory in Marietta, building F-22s, F-35s and C-130Js and updating other planes.

Marietta was the final assembly site for the F-22. The F-35 will be assembled at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Fort Worth, Texas. In all, 3,181 planes are scheduled to be built.

Customers include the Air Force, Navy and Marines, as well as the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.

“We’re pleased that ... suppliers represent such a large geographic swath of the country, and also are broadly represented within the F-35 partner countries,” Lockheed spokesman John Kent said.

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Where it’s built

Wing assembly: 441 workers at the Lockheed Martin plants, Fort Worth and Marietta, Ga.

Forward fuselage: 53 workers at the Lockheed Martin plant, Fort Worth, Texas.

Center fuselage: 270 workers at the Northrop Grumman plant, Palmdale, Calif.

Rear fuselage and tail: 200 workers at the British Aerospace plant, Samlesbury, England.

Final assembly: 345 workers at the Lockheed Martin plant, Fort Worth.

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