Inside the F-35 - The World’s Most Advanced Fighter Jet Explained

We're getting an inside look at the most advanced fighter of them all, the F-35. Can we go see the real jet? This is the most capable, the most advanced fifth generation fighter and its capabilities are unmatched. You see everything in an F-35 because the sensors are so advanced. You have stealth and other defensive systems on the aircraft. For the most part, nobody sees you. I can't wait to see how these are built. The production system is set in place in this most powerful building in the world. When you think about all that's out there, the F-35 is the central node in that. It's the quarterback out on the field. From the factory to the field, let's go see this thing in action. The capability is for what we can do. There are light years beyond where we were at just a decade ago. This is going to be cool. It's time to go behind the wings. I'm Tracy LaDorette, Colorado's first lady fighter pilot. I'm at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in a historic World War II era hangar. Today, we're going to the cutting edge of aviation alongside the F-35. I cut my teeth on the F-16 and while it will always be my favorite aircraft, the F-35 is transforming the world of aviation and land and sea defense in ways I never could have imagined. Get ready for takeoff. The F-35 is not your average fighter jet. It has the most advanced sensor suite of any fighter jet in history. Its integrated helmet technology crunches data in real time. This flying marvel is powered by the most powerful fighter engine in the world. The Pratt Whitney F-135 engine with about 43,000 pounds of thrust. So it can fly faster than the speed of sound at Mach 1.6. That's about 1,227 miles per hour. There are three versions of the F-35. The most common variant, the A model, is flown by the Air Force and used on conventional runways. The B model can hover and land vertically and the C model is made for landing on aircraft carriers and has a tail hook. The F-35 first flew in 2006, entered service in 2015, and today is utilized by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps. To date, nine countries around the world operate the F-35 on their own home soil and it's operated on 26 bases around the world. We're here at my alma mater, the United States Air Force Academy. Today, we're here to learn about our fifth generation F-35 Lightning II fighter aircraft. So we've both flown fourth generation fighters. For you, the F-15 Eagle. For me, the F-16, which I absolutely love. But I'm dying to know, what's so special about the F-35? The F-35 is far and away our most technologically advanced fighter. It's the only fifth generation fighter that is continuing to come off the production line. It represents a generational leap in technology, capabilities, and capacities. And it's all about lethality and survivability. Lethality, i.e., you can go out and fly an aircraft and achieve your mission objectives, whether it's dropping a bomb or launching a missile. And survivability, if somebody's trying to stop you from doing that, from the ground or from the air, you know that you're going to be able to come back from that mission without having to take a ride in a parachute on the way down. Nobody wants to take that silk ride. Can you tell us a little bit about how they're different from the older generations to what you found in the F-35? So the Air Force has, over the years, kind of described or been their fighters into generations. First gen, second gen, third gen, fourth gen, fifth gen. The way that I view them is the first generation was really our first frontline fighters that the Air Force flew. Think like the F-86s in the Korean War. Second generation, now you're kind of talking our Century Series aircraft. The F-100, the F-104, the F-105, kind of the early Vietnam era. And then our third generation fighters were the more advanced multi-role supersonic with radars, kind of think the F-4 and the F-111. Fourth generation fighters are kind of our existing but older portion of our fleet, the F-15s, the F-16s, the F-15E models. And then the fifth generation fleet is typically described as the F-22s and the F-35s. What role does the F-35 play in deterrence? Nobody wants to get in a war, right? That is like the worst case scenario. So if we can deter our adversaries that are even considering going into a conflict with us and they know that we've got a fleet of F-35s, a fleet of F-22s, and a wide range of other capabilities and capacities to back them up, hopefully that makes them less inclined to cross a line where we get in a shooting match. So deterrence is without a doubt the number one imperative. But if that all fails, we've got the muscle to back it up. A couple of key components to specifically the F-35, when you think about fifth gen, stealth is certainly an absolutely critical component to a fifth generation fighter. So you can operate with this concept that we call tactical impunity. So you can prosecute your attack, go out and accomplish your mission without being at threat or at risk or distracted by an enemy that knows where you are. And when they know where you are, they can find a way to distract you or even worse, target you and shoot you. And then it's about integrated avionics and advanced sensors. And the F-35 has all three of those and they're getting better with every single one that we get off the production line. Now that we've learned a little bit about the technology behind the F-35 and how we've advanced to this fifth generation fighter, let's go check out how it's built. We're here at Lockheed Martin's Jet Production Facility in Fort Worth, Texas. This historic plant has been producing airplanes since World War II. And today we're entering the production facility to get an inside peek at the most advanced fighter of them all, the F-35. This is the F-35 assembly line made up of 300 workstations, 50 robots and 4,000 humans working together along this mile long stretch. This place is enormous. This building has been here for many, many, many decades building all kinds of aircraft. Today, we're building the F-35 here. When I first started, we were building the F-16. And in fact, a little bit center fuselage for the F-22. But the factory, even though it's the same outside walls, a little over a mile long, it's very different inside today. We're building at an incredible rate we've never seen before in a fighter aircraft. There's a tremendous amount of technology on this floor, 90,000 fasteners in every airplane. So if we had somebody installing 90,000 fasteners, it would take a lot of time and frankly may not be so repeatable. So we bring robots in. They do installation of these fasteners. They do coding work for us. And it frees up our mechanics to do really the craftsman work. So it's a little different than the Rosie the Riveter days. For the amount of work that's being accomplished every single day, you walk in and you can practically hear a pin drop in here. It is pretty cool. And that's the change, the combination of automation and technology combined with skilled craftsmen. Could you talk a little bit about some of those special characteristics that make the F-35 so powerful? I'll start with low observability. What that means is it gives us the opportunity to get into the enemy airspace without them seeing us and without being detected. And it's a very fundamental feature of fifth generation that the F-35 has mastered. And frankly, the F-35 has been learning from those that came before it. Probably one of the most unique things that the F-35 brought is the ability to communicate not just to other F-35s but to all the other players in the battle space. To be able to share information from an F-35 to another F-35 or to a ship or perhaps bringing it from a satellite. So when you think about all that's out there, the F-35 is the central node in that. It's the quarterback out on the field. The jets that are rolling off the line today, in a couple years they'll be new and different capabilities and we've been able to accommodate that as the threat advances, we're going to stay in front of it. As we make our way down the line, these jets are really starting to take shape. Along the way, parts and components are added like building blocks. Every aircraft is made to order and bears the flag of the country that's adopting it. About 150 F-35s roll out the door every year. So Eloy, we're here in this beautiful production facility where these babies are made. I gotta hear a little bit more about just how are these aircraft built? The production system is set in place in this most powerful building in the world. There's lots of teams that come together. We're constantly in continuous improvement. Each section that it comes in, you get to see the beauty of it come together until we reach the final end and we do the engine install at the very end. And then when it comes out to the paint shop and we finally get a beautiful bird that you see in the sky. I also heard that you're not the first in your family to work in this plant. Can you tell us a little bit about your parents? Yeah, I'm actually the second generation to build such a prestigious aircraft. My parents were on the F-16 program. So I was a product of this kind of environment. So it is a very prideful thing to follow in their footsteps and actually be a part of the process they were for their generation. And today's warfighter is far beyond anything that I've ever seen on the entire planet. We do have the air superiority around the world. Eloy, does this place ever shut down or do you guys operate 24-7? This aircraft cannot be built on one shift. We have over 4,000 people working around the clock to produce this aircraft. Each jet spends about 18 months in production until the newest F-35 rolls off the line ready to turn and burn on its first flight. We've made it to the end of the line and one of the people who gets to test the F-35 on its first flight is Monessa Balsizer. Call sign Siren. She's the first female F-35 production test pilot joining an elite group of female F-35 pilots who came before her. As Colorado's first lady fighter pilot, I'm so excited to meet another first in her field. So the F-35 takes center stage today, but what really brought you to Lockheed originally? I actually joined Lockheed Martin as a F-16 engineer because that was my background and what I knew for so long. And then I got lucky enough to be asked to fly for the company. I eventually started off in the F-16 and then got offered the job to start flying the F-35 as well. I probably have the best job in the company. So yeah, welcome to the F-35. So you get to be the first pilot to get your hands on this jet. It comes off the production line and they hand it over to you. Can you tell me a little bit about what that's like? Literally, it's like a new car for me. New smell, you know, the buttons are nice and crisp. You know, the production line technicians, they did a fabulous job of putting the jet together and then it gets handed into final assembly. And then the maintainers bring it out here for us to climb into the cockpit. What you see in front of you is the F-35A model. It is the cornerstone of 21st century security. And it is a force multiplier because it does so many roles and its capabilities are unmatched. Hidden in this glass area located in the front of the F-35 is what we call, the pilots call the EOT system or the electro-optical targeting system. That is now internalized into the F-35, makes it part of stealth. And then also is a key feature in our sensor fusion. So it's all compacted into this one area. But the great thing is this one sensor talks to everything around the jet. So thanks to this piece of technology, the jet really becomes a thinking part of the crew, right? It's like you're flying a giant computer. Absolutely. And it's just one of the many things around this jet that provides that sensor fusion or flying computer that you always talk about. Can't fly the real jet, but let's go fly the sim. No two-seaters out there for me to fly in the line, right? No, sorry, just single seats. All right, let's do it. It's like you've done this before. Oh, it's like home. I feel like everything I could possibly want to see is available to me all at the same time. It's a different mindset for F-35 pilots. They manage the battlefield and they manage battle space, sharing data, air and ground. So flying the jet itself is supposed to be relatively simple. So you can do all that. They made it easy so that the pilot can look inside and manage the sensors. The fly-by-wire system allows the pilot to really almost go hands-off, super stable aircraft, and now touching inside to manage everything. Generally, you'll take off, depending on your configuration, looking about 150 knots, pull back on the stick to about 10, 13 degrees nose high, and then you're pretty much letting the jet fly off the runway and get your gear up. There you go. Felt the afterburner there. This thing is so easy to take off. Even I could fly it after all those years. Comes back to you though, right? It does. It's like riding a bike. It's like flying a jet. So one thing I wanted to show you was our automated ground collision avoidance system. It saved 13 pilots' lives. Lockheed Martin pilots were saying, we need to get this in the F-35. That's like an autopilot that takes over and hopefully keeps you from crashing. That's how it saved all those lives already. The AGCAS system, what it will do, it will take control of the flight controls if it feels that you are within three seconds of hitting the ground. And that's based off of your altitude, your airspeed, your attitude of the jet. It will use the necessary amount of Gs to get you flying straight. So you see chevrons come. Wow. What an incredible piece of technology. I'm so glad that it is in every one of the jets that are leaving the line. So are those 13 people that are alive today because of it. Oh, yeah. What an amazing day getting to see the jet up close, but duty calls. Well, thanks for stopping by Lockheed Martin. All right, I'm out of here. Let's go. From the factory to the field, let's see this thing in action. We're here at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. We're going to hang out with an operational F-35 squadron today. Squadron VMFA-314, home of the Black Knights, and the only Marine Corps squadron to fly the F-35C variant. They're hosting us for the day and giving us a day in the life of an F-35 pilot. Snooki, everybody wants to show up, hop in the jet, and go turn and burn and have some fun, right? But there's a lot more steps involved than just showing up and flying. Yeah, absolutely. Can you walk us through? I wish it was that easy. So I tell everybody it's not just about the flight itself. You've got the preparation on the front side. So that's all the mission planning that you do with computers nowadays upstairs. And then you actually got to talk about what you just planned. So that's called the brief. It's time to go into the flight briefing room, where we're going to cover the details of today's mission. Come on. Briefings take place before and after each flight, and are at least an hour each, depending on mission complexity. Mission overview, we'll take off out of here, head out to the R-2301 West, knock out our high aspect BFM just amongst ourselves. 1125, the 401 F-5s are going to take off or knock out our dissimilar BFM for the second code for today. What this could look like for you, as you go vertically into this merge and you misassessed his energy, maybe you thought he was slow and couldn't come up to meet you, right? Say, for example, you decide to go up, exploit the vertical, and you realize that he's got energy to come up and match you. If you were to take lead pursuit in this case, sure, it's going to probably achieve a weapon solution faster, but you also realize you're giving him a blue sky background and the ability to pull forward on his canopy and achieve a shot against you. Any questions on what we're going to do today? All right, let's get dressed and go. So that's the flight brief. Time to suit up. All right, so yeah, we're here. This is where we have all of our flight gear. We have the jacket with all of the survival gear on it, as well as the G-suit. And then this is where we keep our helmets. Costing hundreds of thousands of dollars a piece, each helmet is as specialized as the jets themselves. Fitting a helmet to a pilot is a two-day fitting process that involves pupil measurement and can be affected by slight variations in hair length or even weight. The helmet nearly becomes an extension of the pilot's body. You put this helmet on. It is sized, you know, laser-cut for your head. And then once you're wearing it, this will connect to the aircraft on the right side of the G-suit. And there's no physical heads-up display in the cockpit. It's obviously just in the helmet here. With the display visor down, that's where all of your symbology will be combined. And then we have an outer visor that protects from the sun as well. So one of the interesting things about this helmet is you don't ever fly with night vision goggles. It's always fully integrated. So if you have a mission where you take off at night, land after sunrise, or vice versa, you don't have to take any extra equipment. You literally just lift the dark visor up and everything works perfectly. You're doing more than just flying your own jet. I mean, even unarmed, this aircraft has so much more ability to integrate the force. There are a lot of aircraft that carry weapons and have their own sensors. And the F-35 is no different, except that the sensors it has have the ability to share a massive amount of targeting data with everyone else who's airborne or on the ground. So what we are is we're effectively a node in a much larger web of systems. And our presence in a fight, even without weapons, we have the ability to allow other aircraft to participate and be more survivable and lethal in ways that they would not be if the F-35 were not there. The thing that really strikes me is the fact that there's only one seat in these aircraft. So what are you guys doing to take a pilot from the simulator to their first sortie, which is also their first solo in the F-35? The way we handle that is actually through a little bit longer ground school than you're probably used to, to include more simulator training. When you have your first flight, there's an instructor in another aircraft chasing you. So you do have that safety net initially, but it is an increased amount of trust that is given in F-35 pilots initially to learn the aircraft and fly it by themselves. But we've adjusted to that as a community. And from that point, it's very similar to any other fighter aircraft training you would go through where you go through initially familiarization, and then you start to introduce more complex types of flying, formation, night flying, air-to-surface, air-to-air, and then typically carrier qualification where you go out to the ship both day and night and take arrested landings as well as catapults in the F-35C. That's the culmination of your ability to fly the aircraft, and that's really from start to finish how that all works. So you just got back from deployment, working with our coalition forces on the other side of the world. Where were you and how well does the F-35 integrating out there in the real air battlefield? The aircraft's performing very well. The range, the sensor performance, and the ability to integrate and share information with the fourth gen platform. The F-35 really proved its worth where we were, whether that be the Philippine Sea, East China Sea, South China Sea, etc. We were able to meet higher objectives for just really being present and showing what an air wing of the future looks like with F-35 integrated. It's very rewarding as well to really be at the tip of the spear, you know, as an air wing mission commander going out and planning whatever type of exercise we were doing. That F-35 really at the forefront of that and controlling the whole exercise was absolutely the most fulfilling thing I've done so far in my career. Our kids all wanted to fly the F-16 like mom and dad, but after everything I'm learning about the F-35, I got to say they're cleared hot if they want to follow into the F-35 world. It's so impressive, and as the airplane continues to evolve, I can't wait to see where the F-35 takes us. Snooki, you're the commanding officer here at the 314th. You're in a Marine Corps fighter squadron. You deploy on an aircraft carrier, yet you train here at Miramar. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely, and we're a pretty unique squadron within the Marine Corps, actually the only F-35C squadron. For us, the F-35C was designed for an aircraft carrier. However, being Marines, we kind of alternate between deploying with the Navy on the carrier and then land-based operations as well. When we're focused on land-based operations like this summer, we're talking about operations out there in the South Pacific islands in Australia and really getting out there and working with our allies and partners. It's about training for real-world operations, so we train like we fight. So the pilot just completed his walk around, hopped in the cockpit, did some final checks, and you can hear he's cranking up the engine. Time to go fly. These guys are getting ready to go fly high-aspect BFM. Basically, they're going to dogfight, and they're probably going to be up in the air for about an hour and a half. Man, I am jealous. Fight time! So cool seeing this thing fly. The F-35 is such an amazing aircraft. The F-35C model is especially cool. It's the biggest one of all three variants. It's used for landing on aircraft carriers, and it has a ton of range. Let's go talk aircraft carriers. So you got F-35s landing on aircraft carriers. Why do we put them on the boats to begin with? So the F-35 Charlies are on the aircraft carrier because we are the 911 response to the world in crisis. The F-35 plays such a key role in that is because with the technology we provide, we can connect everybody from legacy in the air, in the ground, and give them a much bigger and more detailed picture of what we're facing so that they can complete their mission. What does the flight deck controller do on the aircraft carrier? So as a flight deck controller and FDC, I am the middle person that talks with the dog in the tower, so that way we are maneuvering. Because on the flight deck, you have about 40 to 50 aircraft at one time maneuvering in a very small area, which is about the length of three football fields. So you have three football fields with 50 plus aircraft all moving, all turning at the same time. So my job is to make sure that everyone is safe, making sure that the dog knows where my aircraft are compared to the rest of the squadron. What's it like when the airplane comes in to land? Like how does that look? It's called a controlled chaos. The controlled chaos for a specific reason because of the chaotic mindset of everyone moving all the aircraft around. What stands out with the F-35 Charlie compared to the Alphas and the Bravos is that we have a tail hook which catches an arresting cable and the back end of the aircraft carrier which assists it to get to that stop when it comes to land. I think landing on the aircraft carrier has got to be one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. I would love to experience that someday. But you know what is more impressive to watch is the V model with the short takeoff, vertical landing. I understand you have some experience with that one as well. I do have a previous experience with the F-35 Bravo which is the Marine Corps' replacement variant for the ABAB carrier. So they operate off of what we call an LHD which is a smaller size carrier which holds helicopters and the F-35 Bravo. So with the rest of the branches, Air Force and the Navy and the Marines working together with the F-35 program it does help everyone integrate with one another. Where do you see the future of the air battle turning? Fast forward 10 years, I see F-35s, F-15Es and EXs, F-16s and partner that with the B-21 and you're going to have a heck of a force. When we were out there on the battlefield there were things that we did that were unprecedented that they had never seen before. And what we look at 10, 20 years from now is going to be a different and even more effective F-35 ready for the future fight. When I think about the legacy of it it's enabling others in the fleet and from a relationship across the globe all the allies coming together. It does represent the baseline of our fifth generation fighter aircraft. I think the F-35 is not only the most capable fifth generation aircraft that we have now but it's also the most capable aircraft for the future. It was so inspiring to learn about the incredible technology behind the F-35 and how it will protect our country and our allies. From all of us here at Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum we're looking forward to taking you on more adventures exploring aviation on our planet and beyond. See you next time on Behind the Wings.