F-35 pilots can see thru the floor of the plane? To what end!

Thanks to Kjell for the link!


Pilot talks about the helmet and visuality within the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Lightning II from Krigeren.dk on Vimeo.

Watch the entire video then come back.  Ok, you're back?  Good.  Did you catch all that?  There is no doubt that this USAF pilot is singing the party line, but we did get hints of some cold honesty in there.

First he was almost dismissive of the "the F-35 is so advanced that you can see thru the floor" meme that is always trotted out.  I hear that so much from so many yet never once have I heard someone state a reason why that will help the airplane "fight" better.

The next thing I noticed was that he talked about the F-16 in extremely glowing terms.  I assume that's the plane he came from so its to be understood...but he went off the reservation when he talked about that planes maneuverability didn't he!  Additionally he wandered into some dangerous territory (at least as far as the F-35 fan club is concerned) when he talked about what the F-35, F-22 and F-16 are designed to do.  He called the F-22 the best air superiority fighter in the world.  He stated that the F-16 was designed as a day time, light weight air superiority fighter.

He said the F-35 was designed to do other things....he said it would do them well, but he did say it was designed to do other things.

To be fair at the end of the video he is fully back on board with the Pentagon's talking points and emphasized that if a plane got behind the F-35 and the plane was doing what its suppose to do then it was a pilot problem.

Again, the F-35 fan club will find comfort in that statement.  I noticed that it contained that MASSIVE caveat.  "If the plane does what its suppose to do".

The marker has been laid for the F-35 program not by a blogger but by an Air Force pilot.  They need to make sure that the plane does what its suppose to do.