That is where the West sees the future of air power: in the face of efforts by non-NATO members to adapt to the technology of Western fighter jets, different nations will unite their combat power, seamlessly joining side by side whenever necessary. Explaining the issue, Sqn Ldr Campbell says he ordered an F-35 detachment that went to Estonia in February “to show capability and show solidarity with NATO”.

Mixing technology and human touch

Back in Norfolk, Flatman’s fate is Britain’s F-35B conversion operation unit. It takes trained pilots elsewhere in the armed forces and beginners from the RAF Valley fighter pilot school, and trains them to fly and fight – helping them tackle the F-35B’s Harrier lift fan and the ability to hover overhead. terrain. It is based on a combination of technology and human contact. The constant investment in both human fighter pilots and modern aircraft shows the future of air combat: well-trained flying personnel and technologically advanced equipment. The drones, it seems, have not yet fully understood.
The flying F-35s are the very embodiment of the overmatch – the idea of ​​crushing enemies through technological superiority. The Overmatch even extends to the very skin of the F-35, designed to make the aircraft much less noticeable on radar than its contemporaries. Officially, anti-radar technology in the coating of the outer surface of the F-35 is referred to as “low observability”. The designers learned from an incident over Serbia in 1999 involving an F-117 Nighthawk, when the $ 40 million (32 32.8m) jet was shot down. Now, the modern jet’s highly classified, low-observability coating is designed so that radar waves flow over and along it in carefully controlled ways instead of reflecting back into a hostile receiver. This low visibility has a price: maintaining the special coating requires a lot of specialized traders and above all a lot of time. Removing some external access panels to the F-35, for example, means breaking the smooth contours of the anti-radar coating. The re-application process can take up to two days as the special mixture of materials hardens and hardens completely. Neil “Shiner” Wright, BAE Systems’s ground training delivery director at RAF Marham, is responsible for training military and civilian personnel on how to maintain the aircraft. Holding a wooden model of an exterior panel, cross-sectional to show how repairs are made to the low-visibility coating, he says the design owes much to the F-22 – the former American stealth fighter that still flies today. “Low visibility is the new technology for the UK,” explains Gary Jones, a BAE contractor. Jets from the past, such as the Glosser Javelin, the Harrier, and even the Eurofighter Typhoon, feature painted metal aircraft. Now, the technological advantage required by the western mode of air warfare comes at a high price in time, money and skills. According to Jones, the maintenance of F-35s is less about “hacking and hitting” and has more in common with “arts and crafts”. Shiner jokes that trainees “who make aircraft models and paint them are better than old engineers like me.” So critical is the low-observation coating that ALIS, the complete IT system used to monitor the F-35’s maintenance, has a whole dent routine. Conservators must locate the damaged areas on an acetate sheet and scan it into the computer system. Complex algorithms investigate whether the damage is repairable and decide if it can be repaired or replaced. Steve Brown, head of BAE training in the UK, notes that Britain maintains a “pay to be different” attitude with the F-35, having set up its own dominant training unit. While there are undoubtedly good foreign policy reasons for not relying on the US-approved F-35 repair and overhaul facility in Italy, the commercial reasons are great: seven other European countries are buying F-35s. All their crew will need training and their aircraft will eventually need repair as well. Overmatch is not just a way to win wars, it is a way to do business.

A new generation of pilots

The latest technology in Western air battle is that humans operate extremely powerful machines, complete with sensors and secure networking. Stew Campbell’s boss, Wing Commander David Tait, notes that F-35 pilots are “more of a systems administrator than a pilot” in many ways, with the Air Force looking for people who have “the ability to absorb huge amounts of information.” produced by the jet and other radar and regular systems with which it communicates. “It’s almost like playing a musical instrument, to be honest with you,” says the 617 Sqn commander. The comparison may be strange, but the ability to confidently handle multiple, simultaneous sources of information indicates the possible future of air combat in light of the experience of the Ukrainian war. Dr David Jordan of the Freeman Institute of Aviation and Space at King’s College London agrees that the F-35 and its capabilities will dictate the future of air combat, at least in the eyes of the West.
In the short term, he says, the evolution of aviation energy will be “complementary” to existing older technologies. Recognizing that the overmatch is just too expensive for some countries to embrace it reliably, Dr. Jordan says the future lies in building military aircraft whose strengths and weaknesses can be tackled. He explains: “The realization that if you combine a fifth-generation aircraft with a 4.5-generation aircraft like the Typhoon, you can have a whole host of very interesting effects and results.” Generations, in the world of fighter jet design and development, are a rough way of measuring progress. The only fifth generation aircraft in the world is the F-35. Beneath it is the BAE Systems Typhoon, Britain’s other main fighter aircraft, as well as non-Western aircraft such as the Russian Sukhoi Su-35. Outside of the “generations” of man-made aircraft, there have been developments in recent years that suggest that humans may – at some point – be completely cut off from the cockpit.

Could technology take over?

Boeing has plowed billions of dollars into the Loyal Wingman and MQ-25 Stingray drones, the latter of which looks promising. The first is an unmanned vehicle, showing how future fighter pilots could use the technology to command one or more robot wings. The MQ-25, meanwhile, is not fighting but is intended to be a flying gas station – a tanker that lets other aircraft refuel. Such uses of unmanned technology to extend the durability of man-made airplanes suddenly make a technological future seem much closer. In the skies of Ukraine, drones are notable mainly for their low-tech uses. Small consumer-grade boats are used to drop grenades over enemy lines and drop them on the heads of enemy soldiers before they can react. Larger drones such as Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 are used for aerial reconnaissance. But air-to-air battles are largely absent from the picture. “We have seen many examples in the past of people commenting that they have been seduced by technology,” warns Dr. Jordan. Echoing USAF Dr. Venable’s warning to draw premature conclusions from the conflict in Ukraine, he likens the tendency of some thinkers to say that drones can do it all with Duncan Sandys’ 1957 defense review. Then, as now, the conversation took place between manned airplanes and drones of their time, guided missiles such as the Bristol Bloodhound. It took years for the RAF to recover from the Conservative government’s decision to bet big on missiles rather than manned aircraft. Undoubtedly the British aviation industry has never recovered from the resulting series of mergers encouraged by the state. Calling for a “more gradual approach,” Dr. Jordan says Western air force thinkers should not assume that modern drones will be able to do what an F-22, a Tempest, can do now. or an F-35. “ The British idea for the future air force could be described as realistic, focusing on BAE Systems’ Tempest aircraft.