Great Balls Of Fire

Going behind the scenes at East Anglia airbase RAF Marham to get up close to the new F-35, the first fighter jet that does (most of) the flying for pilots

- Stephen Dobie

Well, a Tornado is your old push-button phone with the antenna coming out, whereas the F-35 is your iPhone.” Jim Beck is the station commander of RAF Marham in Norfolk, UK. Identifying my scrambled brain, he’s breaking down into the baldest terms just what a revolution the Royal Air Force’s new F-35 Lightning II jets – which live at his base – represent.

“This jet fuses all the data it receives together and only presents about one per cent of it to the pilot when a human decision is required. The actual flying of it is the easiest bit. You don’t even think about it any more.” For those of us with wild fighter pilot daydreams fuelled by Top Gun clichés, these advances could be rather disheartening. Just as our smartphones are seldom used for actual voice calls, the F-35 will rarely find itself in a Bruckheimer-esque dogfight.

HIGH FLYER