The
’s premier performance in the skies above Le Bourget Airport is
's answer to years of assertions that the fifth-generation stealth fighter is a waste of taxpayer money and will be no match for potential adversaries.
Now, the company hopes to turn the page on the F-35’s checkered past and shift focus to what it does best: fight.
Lockheed test pilot Billie Flynn, who flew the much-anticipated F-35 aerial demonstration at the Paris Air Show, showcased the capabilities of the controversial new fighter in a way that has never before been seen. The F-35’s slow-speed maneuverability and the power of Pratt & Whitney’s 40,000-lb.-thrust engine were on full display, with the aircraft climbing vertically into the sky and gently falling into a controlled, 360-deg. pedal turn.
The F-35 is not as agile as the twin-engine, thrust-vectoring
Raptor, which is designed for air-to-air combat. But pilots say when the F-35 is flown in the way it is designed to be flown, it is a formidable dogfighter—far more so than its predecessor, the
, or any other fourth-generation fighter.
“This aircraft, down low in this environment, is an absolute monster,” says Flynn. “It is more powerful, it is more aggressive than any of us, including those of us [who] fly the F-35, would have imagined.”
“People are seeing the airplane do things nobody thought it could do,” says U.S.
Lt. Col. (ret.) David Berke, who has flown the F-35B, Raptor, F-16 and
Hornet. “It proves that when the airplane is flown in the way it’s supposed to be flown, it is a dominating within-visual-range platform.”
All this can be done by an aircraft that was actually designed for the air-to-ground mission. As former Air Combat Command chief Gen. Herbert Carlisle liked to say: “The F-35 is the best air-to-air platform in the world, except for the F-22. The F-22 is the best air-to-ground platform in the world, except for the F-35.”
After more than a decade of controversy over the F-35’s cost, schedule and technical challenges, the Paris debut marked the culmination of a year of triumphs for the stealth fighter. The Marine Corps F-35B made its international debut at two air shows in the UK last summer, and during its flight demonstrations brought the crowd to a standstill with its signature hover and vertical landing. The U.S. Air Force declared its F-35As operational in August, and successfully completed the first European deployment in April; meanwhile, the Marine Corps permanently moved a squadron of F-35Bs to Iwakuni, Japan.
Lockheed Martin now aims to turn that momentum into sales. The Pentagon is rumored to be on the verge of a multibillion-dollar international block buy for hundreds of F-35s, and the type is attracting more potential customers around the world.
Orlando Carvalho, Lockheed’s vice president for aeronautics, says during the Paris Air Show he spoke with delegations from countries across Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East about possibly buying the F-35.
“There is generally a drumbeat now around the world about the F-35 that says, ‘Hey, this is a very real airplane, this is a very fifth-gen airplane,’” says Carvalho. “I think many air forces around the world are saying, ‘Hey, we need to take a look at this.’”
Those air forces likely watched Flynn’s Paris performance closely to see if the F-35 truly dominates the skies as Lockheed says. But it is no longer just the manufacturer that is singing the fighter’s praises—U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Scott Gunn of the 33rd Fighter Wing explains that each of Flynn’s maneuvers showcased the F-35’s offensive capabilities, demonstrating how it dominates in a tactical scenario.
The full afterburner takeoff and almost immediate shift into a vertical climb demonstrated the brute power of the engine, allowing the pilot to reach altitude and engage the threat faster, says Gunn. Next, the “square loop” flown by Flynn showed the aircraft’s instantaneous pitch capability and high angle-of-attack (AOA) maneuverability—at the top of the square, Flynn pulled to a nearly 50-deg. AOA, flew level inverted and then repeated the move on the way down.
“If you can go up over the top, and the other aircraft that you are fighting has to stay level, well, then you buy yourself a lot of advantage,” says Gunn. “The ability to point the nose and have the aircraft flying so that high AOA capability allows you to get into positions where other aircraft couldn’t.”
Next, Flynn performed an impressive slow-speed, high-AOA pass, then lit the afterburner and used the power of the engine to fly straight up into the sky once again.
“It’s basically putting the brakes on and letting the enemy fly by,” says Gunn. “Then the F-35’s ability to power up again puts [it] above the opponent and puts [it] in a highly advantageous position.”
From there, Flynn pulled up vertically in front of the crowd and executed a controlled, maximum AOA “power loop,” where the aircraft flips on its back. Then he initiated a spiral at 50-deg. AOA, called a “pedal turn,” which demonstrates the F-35’s slow-speed handling.
“[With] many aircraft at that higher AOA [and] slower speed, the jet’s nose points wherever it’s going to point, wherever the aircraft decides. With this jet, I get to decide,” says Gunn.
After reversing again in front of the crowd, the last move was a maximum-G, 360-deg. turn, which highlighted the maximum-rate, minimum-radius-turn capability of the aircraft. The F-35 in its current 3i configuration is limited to 7g; when the fighter reaches its full war-fighting capability with the final 3F software, it will be able to pull 9gs.
Of course, the F-35 is never supposed to get into a dogfight in the first place. The fighter’s combination of stealth, sophisticated radar and sensors, and suite of advanced weapons such as the
air-to-air missile are designed to find and fix the target before the enemy even knows the F-35 is there.
But it is in the multidomain battlefield of the future that the F-35 will truly prove its mettle, say pilots.
“Before, where we would have one advanced threat and we would put everything we had—F-16s,
, F-18s, missiles—we would shoot everything we had at that one threat, just to take it out. Now [with the F-35] we are seeing three or four of those threats at a time,” says Lt. Col. George Watkins, commander of the Air Force’s first operational F-35 squadron.
“Just between [the F-35] and the [F-22] Raptor, we are able to geolocate [threats], precision-target them, and then we are able to bring the fourth-generation assets in behind us after those threats are neutralized,” Watkins says. “It’s a whole different world out there for us now.”
