Articles taken from Flight International magazine:

8th July: Ninth F-35 joins flight test fleet

Nine of the original 14 F-35 flight test aircraft have flown after the debut on 6 July of the fourth conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) variant, known as AF-3.

The 42min sortie began at 18:20, local time, outside Lockheed Martin's final assembly plant in Fort Worth, Texas, with company test pilot Bill Gigliotti at the controls. Area storms stopped the flight short, Lockheed says.

By David Hayes, Chairman of the Export Group for Aerospace and Defence (EGAD)

The history of US export control reform has been a long and, for the most part, unproductive one. There is, unfortunately, little to support any optimism that the current attempts, of which I am by the way an advocate, will result in the revolution which they seek to bring about. In fact, anything beyond a little evolution may be too much to expect.

That the current Administration has the will to make the changes is not in doubt; perhaps even a greater will than previous efforts, e.g. National Security Presidential Directive 19. The difficulty lies in the probable actions of both Congress and the Senate; particularly at a time when both chambers are as polarised as is currently the case after the healthcare reform legislation and with the 2010 midterm elections looming. Accusations of "Weak on national security" will be bandied about, both by opportunists and those with genuinely held concerns that any changes will be detrimental to US national security. My own view is that failure to make the changes will be of greater detriment but I am not an American.

UKDF Viewpoints comment : this brifing flags up the existence of US-UK and US-Australia Treaties on export licencing which haven't been approved by the Senate. Presumably they hope that the process will be facilitated by introducing this new system. This is a topic on which the U K Defence Forum has been taking UK legislators to lobby in Washington DC for more than five years and which despite many expressions of American goodwill has still not resolved the issues.