Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
LIKE ANY BRAND-NEW
tech, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has sparked public debate: Many people love its cutting-edge programming and forward-thinking improvements, while others aren’t impressed, pointing to the ballooning costs and arguing that America’s newest fighter is more flash than function. But despite all the public acrimony about the plane, we haven’t heard much from the men and women who will strap into the cockpit. We want to know: What’s it like to fly it?
With F-35s now entering service in the US and abroad, Popular Mechanics asked US Air Force pilot and host of The Professionals Playbook podcast, Major Justin Lee, for his opinion of the new fighter.
‘The first time I saw an F-35 was in 2015 at Nellis AFB [in Nevada],’ Lee recalls. ‘They were new and sleek, albeit a bit husky. Their clamshell canopy along with the pilot’s Darth Vader helmet stood out.’
It would still be some time before Lee was able to get into the cockpit of the fifth-generation fighter (F-35s and F-22s are called fifth generation because of their advanced systems, while older fighters such as the F-16 and F/A-18 belong to the fourth generation). ‘I flew F-16s for seven years before I had the opportunity to cross over [to the F-35],’ Lee says.
STRAPPING THE JET ON OUR BACKS
DESPITE THE GENERATIONAL leap in technology from the F-16 to the F-35, Lee says jumping cockpits wasn’t as dramatic as you’d expect.
‘The F-35 buttons and software were derived in large part from the F-16,’ he says. ‘There are more buttons, and each one has more functions, but in general, each one does something similar to what it did in the F-16.’
Familiar or not, the first flight in $100 million worth of state secrets makes even an expert pilot sweat. ‘There are no two-seat versions of the F-35. The first time you fly, you’re by yourself,’ says Lee. ‘As soon as you take off, the only person that can bring the jet back and land it, is you.’
And that first flight can be a little awkward. ‘Once you become proficient in flying a fighter, we call it “strapping the jet on our backs” because it feels like you and the jet are one entity,’ Lee says. ‘My first flight was far from it, and each switch actuation took several seconds to consciously think about – which, in the air, flying a mile every six seconds, feels like minutes on the ground.’
While many parts of a mission easily translate from an old warbird to the new one, the F-35 offers a neverbefore-seen level of streamlined situational awareness.
As soon as you take off, the only person that can bring the jet back and land it, is you.
The F-35’s low-radar observability may be the plane’s flashiest capability, but pilots love how the F-35 fuses data from multiple sources into a single field of view. It’s really what separates the aircraft from anything that has been flown before.
‘In the F-16, each sensor was tied to a different screen … often the sensors would show contradictory information,’ says Lee. ‘The F-35 fuses everything into a green dot if it’s a good guy and a red dot if it’s a bad guy – it’s very pilotfriendly. All the information is shown on a panoramic cockpit display that is essentially two giant iPads.’
The F-35’s ability to integrate all that information into an easy-to-interpret display doesn’t just benefit one pilot. As Lee points out, that integrated feed improves the situational awareness of any other aircraft around an F-35.
‘Advanced sensors, sensor fusion and networking capabilities allow us to be the “quarterback” in the air,’
Lee says. ‘Because fourth-gen fighters will be around for several decades, a significant part of our job is maximising their potential. We can let them know where the enemy is by voice or over the network.’
The F-35 also receives iPhone-like software updates and patches that translate directly into added capabilities and improved performance. Lee says that the aircraft’s software wouldn’t permit the F-35 to turn nearly as hard as its airframe allowed until a software update last year. In five to 10 years’ time, the F-35 might look the same, but its performance will be almost unrecognisable.
‘Some may argue that certain fourth-gen attributes are better today, but they aren’t looking 10 years into the future,’ says Lee. ‘Those platforms are over 40 years old. They’ve been phenomenal workhorses, but iterative improvements aren’t going to win a high-end conflict in the 2030s.’
These new updates mean pilots must stay on top of these changes. Failing to study up on the latest update could mean being left behind, says Lee, or even ending up in a life-threatening situation. But it’s this steady flow of updates – along with its stealth and sensor fusion chops – that make the F-35 the new apex hunter of the skies.
‘The reason the F-15 and F-16 have remained relevant for so long is because they were a forwardleaning departure from third-gen fighters,’ says
Lee. ‘Think of what we were flying 40 years before them: biplanes.’