IN Brief:
- The first Polish F-35A assembled at Cameri has completed its functional test flight.
- Sixteen Polish aircraft are planned for Cameri, with sixteen produced in Fort Worth.
- The Italian site combines final assembly, wing work, flight testing, maintenance, repair, overhaul, and upgrades.
The first Polish F-35A assembled at Italy’s Cameri Final Assembly and Check Out facility has completed its initial functional test flight.
Poland’s initial order for 32 aircraft is divided between Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant and Cameri, with 16 fighters planned from each line. The first Italian-built example has now progressed through major assembly, systems installation, ground checks, engine runs, and the factory processes required before airborne testing.
Further acceptance activity will precede delivery, although the flight demonstrates that another national configuration has moved successfully through Europe’s F-35 production system. Cameri is owned by the Italian Ministry of Defence and operated by Leonardo in partnership with Lockheed Martin.
The site combines aircraft assembly, wing production, flight testing, and regional maintenance, repair, overhaul, and upgrade work. Its workload therefore extends beyond the temporary peak created by new-aircraft orders and into the continuing support of Europe’s growing fleet.
Producing a common fighter at separate sites demands strict configuration control. Tooling, digital work instructions, inspection standards, software baselines, material handling, and approved suppliers must remain aligned so that an aircraft completed in Italy is accepted to the same standard as one built in Texas.
That discipline reaches far beyond final assembly. Major structures, engines, landing gear, avionics, wiring, actuators, transparencies, and low-observable materials arrive from a multinational supply network, and a late component can interrupt several assembly stations.
Low-observable production adds processes that cannot be treated as cosmetic finishing. Surface alignment, panel fit, fastener treatment, coatings, seals, and repair quality affect the aircraft’s signature, requiring controlled environments, specialist technicians, inspection equipment, and detailed traceability.
Assembly and sustainment begin to overlap
Cameri’s position within Europe becomes more durable as the regional fleet expands. New-aircraft production may vary with each customer’s procurement profile, whereas maintenance and upgrade demand will continue throughout decades of service.
The site can absorb structural work, coating repair, modification, inspection, and depot-level maintenance for aircraft assembled elsewhere, retaining skills after the final new-build aircraft leaves the line. Production employees can move into sustainment work without losing their knowledge of the aircraft’s construction and configuration.
Elsewhere in the supply chain, Sonaca’s Belgian F-35 tailplane facility illustrates how European participation is spreading through specialised component plants rather than relying solely on final assembly.
Cameri sits at the point where many such contributions become a complete aircraft. Its performance depends on suppliers meeting quality and delivery requirements across several countries, while the assembly line must absorb differences in customer equipment and programme block configuration.
Upgrades will complicate that work further. New hardware, software, weapons interfaces, processing equipment, and thermal or electrical requirements may enter production while earlier aircraft return for modification, creating several approved configurations within the same facility.
Digital records must follow each aircraft throughout those changes. A maintenance team needs accurate information on installed parts, previous repairs, coatings, software, and structural life, while production planners require visibility of the configuration demanded at each station.
Poland’s split order provides access to both production centres, although it also requires coordination across delivery standards, national equipment, documentation, training, spares, and future upgrade planning. Any difference between the two groups would increase support complexity across the fleet.
The Italian line remains smaller than Fort Worth, but lower volume does not eliminate its strategic value. Cameri gives European customers a regional assembly and sustainment route, while distributing some production and maintenance capacity away from the programme’s dominant US facility.
For Leonardo, the Polish aircraft supports a long-term industrial position whose value will increasingly rest on maintenance and upgrades. For Poland, it creates a direct link into a European support network that will serve several neighbouring fleets.
The functional flight therefore marks more than the completion of one aircraft. It shows how European component production, final assembly, and through-life support are becoming a connected industrial system, with Cameri positioned at the junction between new-build work and decades of fleet sustainment.
