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Three decades ago, a seismic shift in the landscape of air warfare began to take form. The debut of the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit introduced the world to the fifth generation of air power technology. Skunk Works would launch the first true stealth fighter in 1997 when the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor took flight. It wasn’t until the F-35 Lightning II that US Air Force doctrines truly transformed.
The stealth aircraft that paved the way for the F-35 laid the foundation of information-centric warfare in the sky. These jets did more than bypass enemy air defenses. They showed what was possible when combining stealth with data link in an airplane over the frontline. The F-35 is the first warplane tailor-made for this era. It represents a watershed moment in the history of military aviation as network-centric strategy overshadows the kinematic tactics of legacy airframes like the F-16 Fighting Falcon.
20th Century Kinematic Dogfighting: Energy Is Life
The doctrine of Air Combat in the 20th Century was defined by the raw physics of speed, altitude, and turn rates between fighter jets soaring over the battlefield. The fourth-generation legacy fighter jets that the F-35 is replacing today are a product of another major turning point in the history of combat flying. After the Vietnam conflict, the USAF Fighter Mafia spearheaded the Lightweight Fighter Program to introduce a jet that would prioritize energy maneuverability over raw speed and power.
Led by John Boyd, Pierre Sprey, and others, this group sought a lightweight fighter capable of dominating close-in dogfights, a direct response to American air-to-air deficiencies during the Vietnam War. The General Dynamics F-16 would be the result of this program, and it would prove to be the first fighter jet capable of pulling 9-Gs. The Viper, as it was also known, could turn tighter than anything else in the sky and had an exceptional thrust-to-weight ratio that allowed it to gain energy while turning, as well as sights to controls and a bubble canopy that gave the pilot unfettered command over his aircraft.
Similarly, the Boeing F-15 Eagle was designed to fulfill the aerial superiority role with uncompromising performance, with the program even coining the slogan: “Not a pound for air to ground.” The F-15 would break a series of records during testing and after its debut, proving to be even superior in performance to the Soviet MiG-25 and MiG-31 fighter jets that it was developed to compete with. It is so unparalleled by any other warplane in the modern era that it has yet to be shot down in combat despite having over 100 recorded air-to-air kills.
The F-22 Raptor was designed not only to be stealthy, but it also combines all of the best kinematic qualities of both the F-16 and the F-15 in a single airframe. While the F-35 may be a superior “Battlefield quarterback” with its more modern avionics and weapon systems, it can’t come close to the pure performance that the Raptor actually delivers. The fact that the F-35 is inferior in performance and stealth is the single greatest indicator that the battle over information dominance is now the deciding factor in air warfare strategy of the 21st Century.
The JSF: A New Era Of Air Warfare Dawns
The transition from 20th-century kinematic warfare to 21st-century data-centric warfare was a multi-stage evolution. Legacy 5th-generation and upgraded 4.5-generation aircraft served as the bridge, introducing networked sensors as a supplement to their physical performance, whereas the F-35, or Joint Strike Fighter, was built with data as its primary weapon.
In a 4th or 4.5-Gen jet, the pilot has to mentally combine data from different screens like radar, electronic warfare, and maps. In the F-35, the software automates this correlation, presenting one unified picture so the pilot can focus on the mission instead of managing the machine. The F-35 replaced the federated systems of legacy jets, where each sensor worked separately, with a fully integrated sensor fusion architecture.
Unlike the F-22’s isolated data link, the F-35 was built to speak to every friendly platform ever made and yet to be made. It uses the MADL to share massive amounts of data with allied F-35s, ships, and ground stations without revealing its own position. The F-35 Helmet Mounted Display System (HMDS) is what physically enables this transition. It replaces the traditional cockpit dashboard with a digital layer of reality.
Legacy jets require a Head-Up Display (HUD), or a fixed glass plate. If the pilot looks away, they lose their flight data. The F-35’s HMDS puts that data on the visor, so forward is wherever the pilot is looking. On a Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet or F-16, pilots must manually attach bulky night vision goggles that restrict their view. The F-35 helmet even has night vision built into the forehead camera, instantly activated with a button.
Before the F-35, data-sharing was a tool used to enhance traditional dogfighting and strike roles, rather than the core around which the plane was designed. While the F-15 and F-22 are brutal and faster, the F-35 is smarter. It finishes the transition to the 21st century by ensuring the pilot is no longer just a driver of a kinematic machine, but the commander of a vast, invisible information network.
Explained: The 6 Generations Of Fighter Jets
There are six generally accepted generations of fighter jets, with each leap frogging the previous generation.
Master Of The Battlespace: The F-35’s All-Seeing Eye
The F-35 Lightning II is the most expensive defense industrial project in the history of the world. Not only is it a more costly and larger program than the F-22 or the B-2, which are both notoriously expensive, its $2 trillion price tag even exceeds that of the Manhattan Project and the B-29 Superfortress of WWII.
Despite that incredible cost, the F-35 is slower, less maneuverable, and less stealthy than its predecessor. What it is better at is processing data in real time and feeding it to the pilot in an actionable format instantaneously to empower battlefield decision-making. Pilots in 4th-generation aircraft, or older, essentially only had a radar screen and a map, but the F-35 has an incredible data-fused picture on a glass screen that gives the pilot a God’s-eye view of everything around the jet.
An F-35 pilot can see and strike virtually any aircraft in the world before they are even aware that it is targeting them. The F-35 radar can track multiple targets on the ground and in the air simultaneously while performing electronic jamming. On top of that, the F-35 has an incredible camera array around it that gives the pilot a 360° view, including through the bottom of the cockpit, providing uncompromising situational awareness in any scenario.
That same Electro-Optical targeting system, or camera array, can even zoom in using a telescopic lens on targets tens of thousands of feet away while the jet stays electronically silent and hidden from enemy sensors. Compounding the awesome radar and camera system for air-to-air engagement, the F-35 Distributed Aperture System also has infrared sensors that can detect anything fired behind or below the jet and instantaneously warn the pilot on their helmet-mounted display.
How F‑35 Pilots Avoid Situational Blind Spots Using Helmet‑Mounted Displays
The ultimate piece of flight gear.
The F-35’s Helmet-Mounted Cockpit
The F-35 Gen III HMDS is the bridge between the jet’s brain and the pilot’s eyes. In an F-16 or F-15, critical data is projected onto a HUD in the front of the cockpit. To see it, the pilot must look straight ahead. The F-35 has no physical HUD. All flight data, targeting symbols, and even night vision are projected onto the helmet visor.
In legacy kinematic warfare, you had to point the nose of the plane at the enemy to lock on with a heat-seeking missile. This is why turn rates and agility were so vital. The F-35 helmet uses high-off-boresight targeting. The pilot simply looks at an enemy aircraft, even if it’s 90 degrees to the side, and a box appears around the target. The pilot presses a button to designate the target with their eyes. The AIM-9X Sidewinder missile then fires and performs an extreme U-turn to chase what the pilot is looking at. The jet no longer has to out-turn the enemy because the missile and the helmet do the turning for it.
The helmet is synced with the Distributed Aperture System, the six infrared cameras mounted around the jet. When the pilot looks down at their knees, the helmet sensors track the head movement and stream the video feed from the external cameras under the jet. The pilot literally sees through the floor of the airplane. In a dogfight, if an enemy dives below the F-35, the pilot doesn’t lose sight of them. They can maintain a visual track on the target through the solid metal of the airframe.
F-35 Production Is Outpacing All Other Allied Fighter Jets Combined
The reign of the Lightning II.
Fat Amy’s Ace In The Hole: Multifunction Advanced Data Link
The F-35, endearingly referred to as Fat Amy by pilots and crew, uses a high-speed, jam-resistant data network language called MADL, for Multifunction Advanced Data Link, to talk to other assets without giving away its position. This allows it to communicate with any unit, both in the US Armed Forces and partner nations, that has a data link equipped on their aircraft, ships, satellites, or even ground units.
One of the key partners that the F-35 relies on in combat is the ‘eye in the sky’ or AWACS. Whether it’s an Air Force E-3 Sentry, Navy E-2 Hawkeye, or allied E-7 Wedgetail, these enormous radar-equipped flying control towers not only carry extremely powerful sensors but have teams of aircrew and officers aboard to help the F-35 dominate the air. Specifically, this enables the F-35 to fly totally dark behind enemy lines with every sensor except the data link switched off and wait for its target to reveal itself to AWACS.
Once the F-35 has the data, it can operate with the enemy unable to detect its presence or return fire. Using joint operations data, an F-35 pilot can even receive information from a ground station monitoring satellites overhead through relayed communications by the AWACS, too. Similarly, a ground unit close to the front line can pass along target data directly. Even a naval vessel at sea can relay data via the AWACS network bridge to an F-35, or even hand off a missile launched from the ship in midair, allowing the F-35 to take over guidance with its own radar to the target.
