HILL AIR FORCE BASE — The 388th Fighter Wing is assembling its third and final F-35 maintenance team, a group that will sustain the last group of Lightning IIs scheduled to arrive at Hill Air Force Base over the next year.

Since the first two operational F-35s arrived on base in September 2015, two aircraft maintenance units — the 34th AMU and 4th AMU — have helped produce more than 11,000 flying hours with Hill’s current fleet of 40 F-35As, said base spokesman Micah Garbarino in a press release.

The newly minted 421st AMU, which will support the 421st Fighter Squadron, is scheduled to receive its first aircraft in December.

Garbarino said the unit is now being supplied with new airmen, who are conducting maintenance training on four jets loaned from other AMUs at Hill.

Capt. Kimberly Jackson is the officer in charge of the 421st AMU and said the developing team is boning up on the jet’s different operation systems, inspection requirements, servicing and maintenance procedures and munitions loading practices.

Many of the airmen are coming to the program from jobs working on fourth-generation aircraft like the F-15 and F-16. The team studies theory, then applies that knowledge through hands-on work on the borrowed jets.

“Everyone is new and inexperienced to varying degrees, but there is a community of knowledge here in the 388th to draw from,” Jackson said.

Hill’s fleet of 40 F-35s is more than halfway to its full complement of 78 aircraft. The 388th FW’s Public Affairs office says some 8,000 sorties have been launched since the first two jets touched down in September 2015.

Since the initial arrival, the base has been receiving one to two aircraft each month. Once the full fleet of 78 is in place (scheduled for sometime in 2019), the planes will be divided among three fighter squadrons.

Hill has received hundreds of millions of federal dollars for new construction and other operations associated with the jet since the base was named home for the F-35 in 2013.

Hill’s F-35s have already deployed several times, including an “in-theater” deployment to Japan in November of 2017. The deployment featured of 12 jets and more than 300 airmen, both stationed at Kadena Air Base. The group returned in May.

The active duty 388th FW and Air Force Reserve 419th FW both fly and maintain the F-35A under a Department of Defense strategy called Total Force partnership.