Not specifically Lightning connected, but....
They were also a useful one-shot chaff dispenser - a box of chaff, placed inside each airbrake before take-off, would pop out and burst nicely when the airbrakes were first selected at high speed.
That little trick was tried once with some Chaff that someone found in the hangar but it had no effect on the fighter doing the attack. The reason was that it turned out to be ejection seat chaff they had got hold off, which of course is really cut to show up with GCI ground radar frequencies rather than AI radar. It caused consternation/heart failure for a moment among the controllers as the target and fighter had merged on their screen and they feared the worst. As soon as the blip separated and it became apparent that all was well, heartbeats returned to normal although the perps heard about it.