PALMDALE, CA—Northrop Grumman entered full-rate production on the F-35 Lightning II’s centre fuselage in May to meet increasing order quantities from the Pentagon and international customers. According to FlightGlobal, Northrop hired 1,000 additional employees here between the beginning of 2017 and the end of the first quarter 2018 to accommodate the increased production.
Manually assembling small parts isn’t that difficult. Inserting a screw into a hole or a wire into a connector is simply a matter of hand-eye coordination. Assembling larger parts, like, say, the multiton fuselage sections of a jetliner, is whole other matter.
