'One our adversaries should fear': US Air Force General describes how the F-35 is above and beyond the competition

Before coming to the Pentagon to head the

"That is my overall biggest misconception about the airplane," said Pleus.

"We have pilots that are flying it and executing missions today that simulate a combat environment, and we know that this airplane has capabilities that are far better than we could have ever hoped for in a fourth-generation aircraft."

"I can tell you that it is by far the best platform I've ever flown in my entire life, and at that you would have to take me on my word."

In August 2016, declared initial operational capability

In preparing to sit down with Pleus, I recalled comments he made at the Air Force Association's annual conference in September. "In terms of lethality and survivability, the aircraft is absolutely head and shoulders above our legacy fleet of fighters currently fielded," he said at the time. "This is an absolutely formidable airplane, and one our adversaries should fear."

So I followed up, asking him, as one of the few people who have flown both an F-16 and an F-35, what's it like to engage an F-35?

"You never knew I was there," he said with a smile. "You literally would never know I'm there. I flew the F-35 against other fourth-generation platforms and we killed them and they never even saw us."

"If you were to engage an F-35 in say, a visual dogfight capability," he added, "the capabilities of the F-35 are absolutely eye-watering compared to a fourth-generation fighter."

"The airplane has unbelievable maneuvering characteristics that make it completely undefeatable in an air-to-air environment. So if it's a long-range contact, you'll never see me and you'll die, and if it's within visual-range contact you'll see me and you're gonna die and you're gonna die very quickly," said Pleus, who

After a little more than 14 months of negotiations between the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin,

The first step on the F-35's journey to becoming the centerpiece of fusion warfare began on

The cradle of the F-35, with its slick floors, high ceilings, brightly painted assembly areas, and machinery hum, is where

Riding in a golf cart through Lockheed Martin's mile-long production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, I watched the neatly organized bins of nuts and bolts, jet wings, and evolve into a seafoam green airframe.

Once assembled, the planes roll in

The only experts in the F-35 business, are those that fix, maintain, and fly the F-35

Sitting at the head of a conference table in his office, Pleus had the same intensity I remember from the panel discussion at AFA.

"This airplane is out there."

"We got real pilots flying it, real maintenance guys working on it, and if you ask the experts — and my definition of an expert is you either flew it, fought against it, or you fixed it — if one of those three things you are now considered an expert on the F-35," Pleus said.

"If you haven't done any of those things, go find one of those people and ask them what they think about the airplane, and they'll tell you the truth."

"The biggest setback was an instability issue on 3i software," Pleus said thoughtfully.

"The instability was not found out until we released the software to our test community, and they found that the fusion system onboard the airplane with the sensors was having trouble talking to each other."

"So one computer is trying to talk and the other computer is trying to talk at the same time and they basically shut themselves down," Pleus explained.

The 3i software hang-up, which took about four months to solve, caused a delay that will impact the installment of the 3F software, which delivers the plane's full warfare capability.

Another setback, which Pleus labeled a "success," was the polyalphaolefin insulation issue discovered during an inspection at Nellis Air Force Base.

"P

"You say that is a success but what would you say to people who call that a significant setback?" I asked.

Since speaking with Pleus,

Trump's request came a day after meeting separately with the CEOs from Lockheed Martin and Boeing to discuss bringing the "costs down" on the F-35 and the next fleet of presidential aircraft.

via tweet

the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base reaches its full capacity of airplanes in the fall.

"That means that not only will they have their 24 primary assigned aircraft but they will also have the right contingent of properly trained pilots and properly trained maintenance as well as their intelligence folks.

'One our adversaries should fear': US Air Force General describes how the F-35 is above and beyond the competition

The only experts in the F-35 business, are those that fix, maintain, and fly the F-35

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