Exciting times for the Marines who are busy exploring how to tap the versatile capabilities inherent in the F-35B. The jet just makes every other platform/asset around it so much more effective.
https://news.usni.org/2016/11/07/mawts-1-marine-aviation-future-fight#more-22378
Even as operational testers are working out the specifics of how to operate the F-35 onboard an amphibious ship, MAWTS-1 has already fully integrated the Joint Strike Fighter into its anti-air warfare, air-to-ground support, Marine Expeditionary Unit operations and other missions. MAWTS-1 Commanding Officer Col. James Wellons told USNI News in a Nov. 1 interview that the F-35B has been flying in support of the train-the-trainers WTI courses for several years and, as of the fall course that wrapped up on Oct. 22, is “fully integrated in either a supporting role or a leading role in almost every evolution that we do.”
“In some cases the F-35’s fighter capabilities are used – we have a couple of anti-air warfare missions we fly where the F-35 plays a prominent role in terms of not only its fighter capabilities as a missile shooter but also its command and control capabilities in terms of the situational awareness the F-35 provides to the other players who are out there. The F-35 is able to act as a quarterback basically for the other fighters out there, so because of their unbelievable situational awareness even if they don’t have the missile to shoot at a given time they can provide the asset that does have the capability to shoot with the weapons information that it needs,” he said.
“As an air-to-ground platform, as a close-air support weapon or as an airplane that can go out and do armed reconnaissance and coordination, we have also fully integrated the F-35 and we operate it in a similar fashion to the way we operate the legacy fourth-generation platforms, the F-18s and the Harriers. … Also as a sort of an airborne command and control platform, the F-35 entify potential surface-to-air threats that are out there and share that information with ground forces and other players out there on the battlefield.”...
“I think when we first brought in the F-35 we sort of viewed it as a fourth-generation platform on steroids that was low-observable. So we sort of tried to put the F-35, which is really a completely new weapon system, into almost the square peg of a fourth-generation platform,” Wellons said.
“And we’ve grown over the time that we’ve had the F-35 to gain a much greater appreciation – it would be a tremendous waste to see the F-35 as just a low-observable Hornet, because the reality is the F-35 brings tremendous electronic warfare capability, situational awareness, increased lethality in a myriad of different ways. I mentioned the quarterback piece with the fighter threat earlier – to put the F-35 out there as a missile truck basically and have it go down range and take out the air threat and then leave, you’re missing out on the opportunity that the other players, the other platforms are going to get to gain the situational awareness that that F-35 has.”
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