The United States military’s most expensive aircraft, the Lockheed Martin F-35C Lighting II, made its first arrested landing on a Navy aircraft carrier. The stealth fighter plane began at-sea trials to test the plane’s performance aboard the Navy’s aircraft carriers.

The F-35 landed aboard the USS Nimitz on Monday, according to CNN. The airplane, flown by Cmdr. Tony Wilson, landed on carrier at 12:18 p.m. The so-called Joint Strike Fighter performed an arrested landing on the supercarrier. An arrested landing happens when a plane uses a tailhook to grab a wire stretched across the ship’s flight deck, stopping the plane.

According to a press release from the U.S. Navy, the aircraft started Developmental Testing I on Monday and it will last two weeks, the first of three testing stages. Tests will continue aboard “to collect environmental data through added instrumentation to measure the F-35C's integration to flight deck operations and to further define the F-35C's operating parameters aboard the aircraft carrier.”

"Today is a landmark event in the development of the F-35C," said Wilson, a Navy test pilot with Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23. "It is the culmination of many years of hard work by a talented team of thousands. I'm very excited to see America's newest aircraft on the flight deck of her oldest aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz."

Jalopnik reports that the F-35C conducted catapult launch tests on Tuesday aboard the USS Nimitz. The 17-ton fighter was launched with a steam catapult off the deck of the supercarrier.

The aircraft is expected to join the Navy’s air wings in 2018 and fly alongside the Navy’s current line-up.

In the release, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, F-35 Program Executive Officer, said the Navy worked together with Lockheed Martin and Pratt & Whitney, which manufactures the plane’s engine and for good reason. The F-35 is the most expensive plane in American military history.

However, the plane comes at a cost. Lockheed Martin puts the cost of the F-35C at $116 million per plane. This does not include the engine. The Government Accountability Office criticized the project in late September for going over budget. To maintain the expect fleet of 2,400 F-35s in the Air Force, Navy and Marines would cost the government $19.9 billion a year.

Watch the landing:

Watch the takeoff:

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