Combat aircraft

small adjustments. Ultimately, you’re

looking to pull up to a hover abeam

the port side of the ship in daylight.

At night you’re going to  y down the

center ‘tramline’ of the deck and creep

up over spot seven, which is where we

generally land.

‘The autopilot in STOVL is truly

amazing — it’s very steady. There’s a

lot of science going on behind you. We

hold the aircraft above the spot, make

a few positional corrections, then push

the stick forwards and hit a button,

which captures your optimum rate of

descent. You’re just making small line-up

corrections all the way down.’

Vaughn says that despite currently

 ying around the ship without night

vision aids, pilots sometimes call upon

the F-35’s distributed aperture system

(DAS). Pilots can bring this all-round

external view of the jet into their visor,

or up on the large-area cockpit display.

‘I love  ying with the DAS when I’m up

and away from the ship. It can be a bit

of a distraction when I’m landing if it’s in

the helmet, but I love it on the screen.’

Stealthy and healthy

Being out on deck, deployed for long

periods, not to mention slapping

external pylons on and performing

maintenance — it all clearly takes its

toll on the stealthy external surfaces of

the F-35. Damaging the skin is a huge

concern, especially as the USMC aspires

to maintain 100 per cent low-observable

(LO) integrity for its entire F-35  eet. All

the squadron’s aircraft are ‘go-to-war’

assets — there’s no di erence between

the way the training squadrons operate

and they way the front line operates.

The USMC attitude is: if you’re paying for

a stealthy aeroplane, you might as well

keep it stealthy.

Vaughn says that LO maintenance

isn’t as much of a headache as some

expected, and attributes much of this

to the internal maintenance teams

within each squadron. ‘It’s about having

a  fth-generation way of thinking and

approaching this,’ he explains. ‘The

way our maintenance publications are

written is that the job isn’t complete —

the airplane is not  xed — until the LO is

restored on it. That’s been learned from

prior stealthy platforms where maybe

the LO wasn’t always maintained and

it was deferred. Certain F-35 panels do

have deferrals on them, which means we

can wait a certain number of days before

the LO is fully restored. Some have a

 ve-day deferral. It means we might

 nish the bulk of the job on a Monday,

which gives us a few days to  y the jet

‘green’, as we call it. Then we’ll have a

crew come in on Friday or Saturday to  x

the LO so it can cure over the weekend,

and by Monday it’s fully ready to go.’

Certain panels don’t require any LO

maintenance — they’re panels the

maintainers have to get into all the time.

Others require some LO restoration,

but Vaughn says, ‘it just becomes the

way of doing business.’ Maintainers

at VMFA-211 acknowledge that

while most procedures are relatively

straightforward, others — such as

changing a wingtip navigation light —

are overly complex, time-consuming

and frustrating. Vaughn says experience

is enhancing the procedures massively

when it comes to maintaining the

aircraft. ‘There was a panel that required

Above: An

F-35B in Mode

4 moves above

the landing spot

on the USS Essex

(LHD 2). USMC/

Sgt April L. Price

Below: The

recent ‘Dawn

Blitz’ exercise

saw VMFA-211

operating from

the USS Essex.

USMC/

Sgt April L. Price

VMFA211 | UNIT REPORT

47

January 2018 http://www.combataircraft.net

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