LIGHTNING IITHE FIGHTER EVOLUTION - F-35

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F-35 LIGHTNING II F-35A into service

Of the Mountain Home deployment, Carlisle

added that of the 88 scheduled flights, only

two sorties required utilisation of a spare

aircraft. Despite this pair of ground aborts,

all sorties were executed on time: “Compared

to other, legacy airplanes, this is exceedingly

good,” Carlisle enthused. “The two airplanes

that had problems were fixed before the next

‘go’ and they were back on the front lines.

This is really, really exceptionally successful

from a maintainability point of view.” Gen

Carlisle identified only two areas in which

the F-35A’s path to IOC had been troubled.

First, the ALIS “is not quite to where we

want it to be, but there’s workarounds. We

want to get more effective and efficient with

ALIS, but it’s actually very deployable”. The

second was an issue of aircrew qualification.

Cost is an issue that will never go away

and there is no doubt that larger block buys

are needed to bring this down. It was highly

unusual to declare IOC with an aircraft that

still required so much development and

operational testing to be completed. Pressing

the F-35 into service with a fairly limited range

of weapons effects that it can bring to bear

reflects the vicious circle of needing to ramp

up production to bring down costs, balanced

against immature capability. But the F-35 has

to offer capability from the outset, and for the

USAF it’s been a balance of having sufficient

strings to its bow to justify entry into service.

FLEET GROUNDED

One tangible downside to the eagerness to

press this fighter into service with so much

that still needs to be learned emerges when

maintenance safety considerations come

into play. The USAF was forced to ground

15 F-35As, including ten operational jets,

from September 16, 2016, due to a problem

ABOVE: On the tarmac at RAF Lakenheath in 2017, an F-35A awaits the next mission. Jamie

Hunter RIGHT: Hill F-35As top up their tanks from a KC-135R from the 100th Air Refueling Wing

at RAF Mildenhall. Jamie Hunter BELOW: The detachment to RAF Lakenheath in 2017 saw the

Hill F-35As  ying alongside resident F-15Cs and F-15Es. Jamie Hunter