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The landing of AF-1 – which flew first in Italy in September – by one of the Italian pilots
trained at Luke AFB in the Fall highlighted the progress of the program. The flight from
Cameri to Pax River added some miles to the program which is nearly 50,000 miles
flown by the fleet to date.

The pilot’s call sign is Ninja and we interviewed him when he flew the F-35 at Luke in
the Fall of 2015. During that interview he highlighted the unique international quality
of the program:

Question: What does an integrated F-35 fleet bring to coalition combat, from your
point of view?

Answer: We will write the TTPs together.

The commonality from the very beginning will be built into any operation which you do with
your coalition partners.

And we are working from the ground up with the USAF, which is different as well from before.

We have made significant progress in the past two years, which is often not grasped by those not
involved in the program.

And let me return to the point we discussed earlier about the difference between multi-mission
and multi-tasking and the impact on operations.

You do not have to switch your configurations for air-to-air to air-to-ground or whatever the
mission for which you have been pre-configured.

You can do what you need to do with the situational awareness built into the jet and the fleet and
then fly to the mission.

After Ninja landed, reporters had a chance to discuss the flight with Ninja, and we will
provide a full report on that interview in the near future, for it was comprehensive and
wide ranging in discussing the jet and its clear capabilities right now resident in the air-
craft.

Second Line of Defense Lessons Learned at Pax River
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