I have a question for anyone involved with the program. I have often enjoyed listening to friends and colleagues with F-4, F-14 and F-18 (oh, and Sea Vixen) deck experience telling me about the rigours of doing deck landings, especially in weather and at night. I think we all here have a good feel for what a challenging event this is and what a perishable skill it must be.
So now F-35 has Delta Path, which has been shown to make this event so much easier and, albeit with a small dataset of landings in reasonable conditions, appears to offer a high success rate. This has to be excellent news.
But, all systems fail. ALL systems CAN fail. So my question is this. If the F-35C force have a cadre of pilots who's normal landing mode is the relatively benign Delta Path approach and trap, how much time will they need to spend conducting traditional, manual landings in order to achieve and maintain proficiency in a failure mode?