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Answer: Before you go to the boat, everything stops in the squadron. All training stops
two to three weeks where all you're doing is banging left-hand turns. No one is doing
any tactical training.

Everyone’s bandwidth is concerned with how they are landing at the ship. Once you’ve
been out on the ship for a few days and the landings are looking better, then finally you
can start working on what we want to work on again tactically.

Where you’ve just taken a pause from all your tactical performance for the past nearly
month, that’s going to go away with the F-35, which will allow you to be dedicated to
your tactical performance.

Question: Clearly, the Super Hornet is an excellent airplane, but the F-35 is a very dif-
ferent aircraft with a different approach to air system operations.

How do you see the F-35 affecting tactical training?

Answer: With the current air wing, we are wringing out our tactics for a tactical advan-
tage, which is also, at the same time, at the edge of the envelope for survival.

We are spending a lot of time making sure that we have the right tactics and the mas-
tery of those tactics by pilots to survive and succeed.

It is about keeping a level of competence and capability where you’re not going to die.
There are points where you have a twenty second window. You miss that window and
you might be blown up. When you’re traveling at those speeds, we are talking really
only a couple of seconds that you have. And, if you’re not performing tactics exactly as
they’re prescribed, you put yourself in a kill zone.

With the F-35, we are jumping a generation in tactics and now looking at the expanded
battlespace where we can expand our impact and effect.

You need to take a generational leap so we are the ones not playing catch up with our
adversaries.

Second Line of Defense Lessons Learned at Pax River
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