Lockheed Martin Demonstrates Advanced Fighter Jet

Remember how smartphones took all your other handheld devices and combined them into one? A GPS, an iPod, a video game system, a camera and, of course, a phone, all in the palm of your hand.

That’s kind of what the F-35 fighter jet does for military pilots.

Stephen Callaghan, retired Navy aviator and Desert Storm veteran, said in the planes he used to fly—the current generation of fighter jets—pilots had to maneuver not just through the skies, but also through an array of displays presenting all sorts of information.

“You have a radar display, you have an electronic warning display … infrared. The fusion of the data was in the pilot’s brain,” he said. “This airplane (the F-35), from the get-go, fuses all that information in a very easy-to-read way.”

Produced by Lockheed Martin, the F-35 represents the future of fighter jets for three branches of the military: the Air Force, Marines and Navy. Lockheed Martin showcased the F-35’s mobile cockpit demonstrator during a presentation in Mount Laurel Thursday for a crowd of employees, state and local elected officials, and members of the media.

The cockpit demonstrator provides a simulated (albeit less intensive) experience of what it would be like to fly the world’s most advanced fighter jet. Tony Stutts, simulation test director, said the demonstration is very similar to what military pilots will undergo during their training.

He explained how the console amalgamates all the different displays pilots used to have to decipher on their own.

The advantage of freeing up a pilot’s brain from having to process all that information, Callaghan said, is “It really enables the pilot to be more of a tactician. You don’t want to spend a lot of your time manipulating (the instruments). Time can cost you.”

Perhaps even more impressive than this “sophisticated sensor fusion” is the F-35’s stealth capabilities, said Callaghan, Lockheed Martin’s director of F-35 operations in Washington, DC. The fifth generation aircraft is virtually undetectable to ground-based missile systems or any sort of anti-aircraft weaponry that might try to lock on and shoot it down, which is “something our multi-role fighters simply haven’t had in the past,” he said.

“They (the enemy) don’t know we’re there until it’s too late,” Stutts said.

According to Callaghan, the F-35 program—commissioned by the government about a decade ago—is vital because many of the planes the military are flying today are almost at the end of their useful life.

“They’re flying old hardware, based on old designs,” he said. “The threats haven’t been standing still. Frankly, the new threats that we see coming in the near future, and beyond that, make those current airplanes that they’re flying now nearly obsolete.”

Though the $65 million aircraft is still being produced at a low rate, Callaghan said, Lockheed Martin has already delivered several F-35s to the Air Force and other branches of the military. The military has ordered 2,443 jets in three different variants, each one designed for a different branch.  

F-35 by the numbers:

• The program generates more than 950 direct and indirect jobs and more than $63 million in economic impact across New Jersey.
• Provides more than 127,000 jobs directly and indirectly across the entire U.S. economy.
• Reaches speeds of around 1,200 mph (Mach 1.6).
• Weapons load consists of a cannon, two air-to-air missiles and two 2,000-pound guided bombs.

Lockheed Martin’s Moorestown location was not involved in the production of the F-35.