F-35 test pilot shares what it’s like to jump from flying an old F-16 to Lockheed Martin’s newest 5th-gen stealth fighter

• Enterprise Insider lately sat down with a take a look at pilot for the F-35 stealth fighter jet.

• She defined what it was like to leap from flying the older F-16 to the fifth-generation plane.

• The most important transition within the F-35 was the quantity of knowledge offered to the pilot.

A take a look at pilot who made the soar from the now fifty-year-old F-16 to the brand new F-35 stealth fighter advised Enterprise Insider that it’s a wildly completely different expertise.

Take into consideration the informational overload you’ll get from swapping out a decades-old pickup truck for a contemporary Tesla. There’s plenty of further data pilots get from the F-35, which is provided with a set of latest applied sciences in comparison with legacy plane.

Monessa Balzhiser, name signal “Siren,” is a pilot who has had the chance to maneuver over to the brand new jet, working as an F-35 take a look at pilot at Lockheed Martin’s manufacturing facility in Forth Price, Texas, following years flying the F-16 for the US Air Drive.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon, a Lockheed Martin airframe initially manufactured by Common Dynamics, is a single-engine, multi-role plane that took its first flight over 50 years in the past. The fourth-generation fighter jet was developed for the US Air Drive however is now in service with greater than two dozen militaries around the globe, together with — as of final 12 months — the Ukrainian armed forces.

The F-16 was revolutionary from an aircraft design philosophy perspective, rising as the primary manufacturing fighter jet with digital fly-by-wire controls for improved air-to-air fight capabilities. However within the age of stealth plane and higher-end surface-to-air threats, the F-16, even with the upgrades the fighter has gotten through the years to make sure it nonetheless packs a punch, is shedding its as soon as formidable edge.

The much-newer F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is a supersonic stealth plane that took its first flight practically 20 years in the past. The platform has advanced tremendously through the years.

The plane has confronted criticism amid developmental setbacks, sustainability challenges, and rising prices (the anticipated lifetime value of this system is now over $2 trillion), however the jet is consistently being upgraded and reworked for improved functionality. Proper now, no adversary capability compares, however new jets are popping out in rival nations. China, as an illustration, unveiled a variety of new plane designs late final 12 months, together with what some suspect was a sixth-gen fighter prototype.

“The F-35 — we’re persevering with to develop it,” Siren mentioned.

“You are going to see threats — adversaries — evolving,” so the precedence is sustaining the benefit “to make sure we are able to come dwelling secure,” she added.

The F-35 is the second fifth-generation fighter jet operated by the US after the F-22 Raptor and is available in three variants flown by the Air Drive, Marines, and Navy. Developed and produced as a part of a multinational partnership, many American allies function the jet, with extra trying to take action sooner or later.

Siren flew the F-16 within the Air Drive for 13 years, a tenure that included a number of fight excursions. At Lockheed Martin, she works because the chief manufacturing pilot for the F-35.

Take a look at pilots are the primary folks to truly fly the F-35 off the manufacturing unit ground. The fighter will get airborne a number of instances — the primary two or three flights are with the corporate — earlier than the US authorities goes via all its checks to verify the jet is all good and able to be bought.

For Siren, the largest distinction when she made the transition from the F-16 to the brand new F-35 was the sheer quantity of knowledge being offered to the pilot.

Siren mentioned that within the F-16, “we had a few of that data, but it surely was all proven on a number of completely different shows or codecs.”

Prior to now, the pilot needed to calculate easy methods to use sure ways or interpret the offered battlespace of their heads, however the F-35 does all of that for the pilot, permitting them to focus their efforts extra on the larger mission image. One other F-35 take a look at pilot beforehand advised BI that it may be tough to get good at managing all the information, evaluating the jet to a classy online game.

Siren mentioned the largest shock of the F-35 was its flight controls in low-speed situations. The fifth-generation fighter jet is provided with a greater sensor suite, situational consciousness, and knowledge fusion capabilities than the F-16. These superior capabilities permit it to carry out as greater than a fighter jet.

The benefit of the F-16 has all the time been in its velocity and switch price, she advised BI. “Nevertheless, all of the flight controls and the pc that runs the flight controls on the F-35 permits me to intercept — on the identical mission — a sluggish, low Cessna going 80 knots to a excessive, quick flyer going Mach 1.2,” which is over 900 mph.

That useful skill and “the excessive angle of assault that the F-35 can carry out was what caught me off guard coming from the F-16,” she mentioned.

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