Page 18 - F-35B and USMC

The Integration of the F-35B into USMC Operations

Mo: Without getting into the technical details it is very, very simple for us.

The way the jet is set up, we make a move to execute electronic attack and the jet will take care of it.
On a personal level as pilots, coming from other platforms and stepping into the F-35, do you have an
“aha” moment that you can share?

Guts: My first “aha” moment was a seemingly simple thing.

I was executing a familiarization flight near MCAS Yuma. I was coming back to the airfield and I basically just
turned the jet and pointed its nose at Yuma.
Immediately the jet is providing me the information of all the traffic that is out there in the airspace.

When I talk to approach for the first time they are telling me about the traffic that is out there that I already
know about and I see it.

I can tell who everybody is that he is talking about and the jet also saw traffic that ATC hadn’t seen yet and I
asked about it. And I thought, “holy cow,” here I am coming back to the field from a simple familiarity mission and
my jet is telling me everything about the operational environment I am about to go into.

In this case, something very simple, the traffic pattern coming back there, but I didn’t have to do anything to have
that level of SA.

I can start making decisions about what altitude I wanted to go to, if I wanted to turn left or right, speed up or
slow down.

There’s somebody coming up next to me, I want to get in front of them – or whatever.

It is a very simple example, but I thought WOW this is amazing that I see everything and can do that.

The other was the first time I vertically recovered the airplane. The flight control law that the airplane has is
unbelievable and I always tell the anecdote. Flying AV-8B Harrier IIs, I only had one specific aircraft I felt like I
could kind of go easy on the controls and it would sit there and hover.

I love the Harrier, love flying that aircraft, but there was work involved to bring it back for a vertical
landing. The very first time I hovered an F-35B I thought, I am the problem here, and I am just going to let the
jet do what it wants to do.

The F-35 was hovering better than I could ever hover a Harrier without doing a thing. That’s back to that
workload comment I said earlier. I am performing a vertical landing, and I have the time to look around and see
what is taking place on the pad and around me. It is a testament to the jet.

FIGURE 4 PILOT BRIEFING ONBOARD THE USS AMERICA. CREDIT: TODD MILLER
Second Line of Defense

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