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And, we will see how the new pilots — versus more experienced pilots — can benefit
from these flight control capabilities built into the aircraft.

CDR Murphy: We will see the real impacts as the airplane comes to the carrier deck. The
aircraft performs so well behind the boat, we could well see a reduction in training time
with regard to flying the aircraft, especially around the carrier.

The key benefit is that as the amount of necessary training time to fly the aircraft goes
down, the amount of available tactical training time goes up, which will be a significant
gain for the fleet.

Question: The Navy is the last service to acquire the F-35 and has been widely per-
ceived as dragging its feet and providing significant opposition to acquiring the air-
craft.

Does this mean that the roll out of the culture changes (of the sort you are talking
about) will see a slow cycle as well?

CDR Murphy: I do not think so.

There has been a barrage of literature out there, which has not always painted the air-
craft in a favorable light, and our carrier pilots read that literature.

But, as the cadre of pilots grows and the aircraft makes its way to decks of carriers, you
will see significant change rapidly.

We operate air wings; meaning that when a new air system comes to an air wing, the
entire air wing is affected and its culture changed.

And, since the air wing trains together and deploys together, the F-35 will become in-
grained as part of that air wing very rapidly.

Other Navy air wings will look at this experience and competitively seek to be as good
or better than the last air wing that operated the F-35. Peer pressure is a powerful learn-
ing tool.

Second Line of Defense Lessons Learned at Pax River
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