The U.S. Air Force’s
F-35A will fly its first aerial demonstration at the Paris Air Show this year, with
Lockheed Martin pilots performing aerobatics in the skies above Le Bourget Airport.
Just one month out from the start of Europe's largest aerospace showcase, which runs June 19-25, plans are finally coming together for the F-35's debut appearance at the event. The demo is an unexpected twist; last year during the F-35A’s appearance at the Royal International Air Tattoo in the U.K., pilots from the Air Force’s F-35 Heritage Flight Team flew only straight-pass flyovers alongside the
F-22 Raptor.
The demonstration will showcase the maneuverability of Lockheed’s fifth-generation fighter, and perhaps lay to rest claims that the F-35 cannot match some fourth-generation aircraft in power and performance. The Joint Strike Fighter’s maneuverability was famously called into question in July 2015, when a blogger got his hands on a report in which the aircraft was outclassed by the
F-16 in mock aerial combat.
The news of the upcoming performance also adds fuel to rumors that the F-35 may eventually replace the F-16 in the Air Force Thunderbirds, the service’s premier aerobatic team since 1953.
Lockheed pilots will conduct the demonstration, but Air Force pilots may fly the fighters across the Atlantic for the show, according to the service.
It is still not clear whether the demo will include one or two F-35s, or whether either will appear in the static park at Le Bourget. The Air Force will send two F-35As to the show, according to Col. David Lyons, commander of the 388th Fighter Wing at Hill AFB, Utah. One will be from Hill, and the other will be from Luke AFB, Arizona, where the Air Force trains its F-35 pilots and maintainers, Lyons said during a May 17 conference call.
The Air Force does not yet have an F-35 demonstration profile for air shows due to the limited number of aircraft, pilots and maintenance professionals, service spokesman Capt. Mark Graff said. The service plans to develop and perform F-35 aerial demonstrations – akin to performances by the Air Force Thunderbirds and F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team – beginning in 2018, building on lessons learned from the performance at Paris, he said.
Lockheed, on the other hand, has been developing an F-35 demonstration profile for some time, and the pilots will now begin practicing the routine at the company’s F-35 production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, according to company spokesman Mike Rein.
“While we look forward to demonstrating the unparalleled maneuverability of the F-35 to the world, we remain singularly focused on bringing the full combat capability of the F-35 to our nation,” Graff said. “We will build our demonstration profile based on the experiences and lessons learned from F-35 participation in other air shows and the Lockheed Martin demonstration at the 2017 Paris Air Show.”
The appearance will mark the F-35A’s second trip across the pond in just more than two months. Eight F-35As from the Air Force’s 34th Fighter Squadron and the Air Force Reserve’s 419th Fighter Squadron based at Hill just arrived home after almost a month in Europe. They were conducting training missions with NATO allies as part of the European Reassurance Initiative. The F-35s, temporarily based at
RAF Lakenheath, England, flew to Estonia and Bulgaria during the deployment.
The successful Europe deployment was “a major stepping-stone” in the run-up to taking the F-35A into combat for the first time, should the squadron be required to do so, Lyons said.
“Now we know that we can take the F-35 and all the equipment and we can go wherever we want to go in the world and be bedded down,” Lyons said.
During the trip, the F-35 flew 80 out of a planned 84 sorties, with just four lost for maintenance-related issues. The team was able to repair those aircraft using parts in the deployable spares package they brought on the trip, Lyons said.
Overall for the deployment, the mission capable rate was 87.5%—not perfect, but better than the F-16s currently flying in Spain, which clock in at 75% mission capable.
The team had no issues with the deployable Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), the F-35’s internal logistics system designed to electronically track each part of each aircraft, Lyons noted.
“That really was at the end of the day one of the biggest objectives of the deployment was to prove that we could take the spares package, the ALIS, the personnel, the jets, all of the logistics train that goes along with this deployment,” Lyons said. “The greatest compliment was how routine this deployment felt.”