I got to visit the 33FW facility at Eglin this week. I'm not going to lie, it's an astonishing facility that can't parallel any training facility I've seen in any of the services. The approach that is being taken to training isn't what I'd call revolutionary, but it is a step above what most of our schools are capable of doing. For instance, I actually have faith in the computer based training. It's highly interactive, and I'm sure expensive to develop, but if it works as advertised it's going to put out some well trained maintainers/ordies/PR's. I actually got to put my hands on the first two F35Bs and see that they are actually real. It's a VSTOL plane with relatively small intakes though (low observable/stealth means no fan blades visible), so I'm not really convinced that it's not just full of packing peanuts.
I haven't completely drunk the koolaid on this jet and it's initial TTPs the way the guys at Eglin have, but I'm pretty excited about its future.
I haven't completely drunk the koolaid on this jet and it's initial TTPs the way the guys at Eglin have, but I'm pretty excited about its future.