The F-35 fighter jet, designed to have as much commonality as possible between the services that use them, has had a long and rough development, but it has finally stepped up the plate as possibly the world’s best fighting plane.
Linda Shiner, writing at Air & Space Magazine (affiliated with the Smithsonian), interviewed eight F-35 pilots to find out first hand what they had to say about it. Here are some excerpts:
Lieutenant Colonel David “Chip” Berke | USMC (ret.):
In an F-22 and F-35, one of the most enjoyable things is being virtually undetectable until it’s way, way, way too late for the threat. If you manage the signature really well, and you do it in a way that is integrated with the other platforms, most of the time the threat doesn’t know you’re there. And that’s why I have extreme faith that the machine is going to be the most dominant aircraft ever built.
Lieutenant JG Thorys Stensrud | U.S. Navy Strike Fighter Squadron 125:
I’m sure some people brought some skills from video games that might have helped them out, but probably not too much. I played some video games growing up, and I don’t find comparability between playing video games and flying the F-35.
My training class was the first to have the opportunity to go straight to the F-35. I hope that we can live up to the expectation and add to the corporate knowledge around the jet.
Colonel Arthur “Turbo” Tomassetti | USMC (ret.):
In the Harrier, I needed to practice hover because hovering was hard, especially if it was windy out. In this airplane, hovering is so easy that there have been pictures of pilots with their hands above the canopy rails showing, “Look, no hands” because once you put it where you want, it’s going to stay there until you tell it to move or it runs out of gas.
Major Valerie “Twitch” Wetzbarger | F-35 instructor pilot, USAF 56th Fighter Wing, Luke Air Force Base:
The primary mission of the F-35 is suppression of enemy air defenses. The training missions that maximize our learning are when we can locate surface-to-air missiles, protect the other strikers in the formation, bomb or suppress the targets we’ve been assigned, and then fight our way out. That mission is very similar to the F-15E, but the information fusion, pilot interface, and physical capabilities in the F-35 take our efficiency across the formation and among partner nations to a whole new level.
Jon Beesley | Lockheed F-35 Chief Test Pilot, 2002–2011:
The F-35 is as maneuverable as any other airplane, except perhaps the F-22. Russian airplanes are also very maneuverable, but if you dig into [the Russian demonstrations of maneuverability], what you’re seeing is the capabilities of airplanes flown by exceptional pilots. What we were building with the F-35 is an airplane that everybody can fly. That’s the critical part of it.
Squadron Leader Andy Edgell | Royal Air Force, F-35 Patuxent River Integrated Test Force:
For tests in departure resistance, we truly had to trick the system. We would disengage all the self-protect mechanisms to put it into an out-of-control regime. And then we would allow the controller to wake up. It would recognize the situation it was in, and then it would get itself out of the situation. Absolutely fascinating. It will null all of the pitch rates, yaw rates, and roll rates to the extent that you can get it out the attitude that you’ve got it into.
Lieutenant Colonel Yosef Morris | USAF 4th Squadron Commander, 388th Fighter Wing, Hill Air Force Base:
In the two years since [the 388th’s] last Red Flag exercise, the airplane itself has had some pretty significant advancements. A couple of months before the 2017 Red Flag, the Air Force declared that the squadron was what we call “initial operational capable.” So the jet still had some operating limitations—altitude, airspeed, Gs, things like that. The software on the aircraft, though very capable, still had some limitations in terms of some of the systems and some of the weapons it could control. Fast forward two years, and we’re operating with what’s referred to as full warfighting capability software. It’s a more advanced F-35 than it was two years ago.
Billie Flynn | Experimental test pilot, Lockheed Martin:
For four years, all people could talk about was how we’d lost a dogfight against a 40-year-old F-16. Paris was the first time we showed what the airplane could do. The F-35 engine is the most powerful fighter engine in the world, so on takeoff, I pulled straight up. The F-22 Raptor is an airshow favorite because it is super maneuverable. It has thrust vectoring; it controls the engine exhaust with paddles that move. The F-22 can do a downward spiral, and I did the same thing in the F-35—without thrust vectoring. I pull up to vertical, skid the airplane over the top, and spiral down like a helicopter hovers. That pedal turn [executed with rudder inputs] ended the discussion of how an F-35 would perform in a dogfight.
Sounds like the airplane has matured to the point where we don’t have to be embarrassed about it anymore. Excellent!
One reply on “F-35 Comes of Age”
Love it