‘Top Gun’ pilot excited to fly new stealth fighter
A LEADING RAF test pilot has said watching Top Gun helped persuade him to join up, as he is tipped to be the first to fly a new F-35B jet from the new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier.
Sqn Ldr Andy Edgell said the controversial new fighter was so powerful it would be “utterly nonsensical” for Britain not to buy the world’s first supersonic short take-off/vertical landing (STOVL) stealth aircraft.
The 37-year-old is one of several RAF and Royal Navy test pilots who have been putting the plane through its paces in the US.
Britain has committed to buying 138
of the jets in the coming decades, and they will be flow both from land and from the country’s new carriers.
Flight tests from HMS Queen Elizabeth are due to start next year, with Sqn Ldr Edgell expected to be the first to fly an F-35 off its decks.
With a British Airways captain and air hostess for parents, Sqn Ldr Edgell says there is no doubt at all aviation runs through his veins.
He also admitted that watching Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise, was a “fantastic bit of recruitment” when it came to encouraging him to become a military pilot.
He said: “It would be utterly nonsensical not to purchase and design and develop the F-35 and have it as our core ingredient forming our air power,” he said. “It is an incredibly, incredibly powerful aircraft and I am not talking about thrust, the capabilities it brings to the battle space. The disappointing thing is I can’t share all the details... I do think a lot of the critics would be quietened very quickly.”
The UK currently has 12 F-35B jets in America being tested ahead of flight trials off the ship next year – with two more being delivered by the end of 2017. The international effort to build the jet is the costliest weapons programme ever but its development has been beset by cost overruns and delays. It is designed to operate from austere bases and a range of air-capable ships near front-line combat zones.