further to your point FODplod
Group Captain Townsend: I think this plays very much into the concpet that ‘Aegis is my wingman’.
I think from a U.K. perspective, Type 45 is my wingman.
The importance there is that the F-35 pilot for the U.K. or for any of F-35 operator, the information he has available to him allows him to make decisions for other operators in the battle space. And that is not simply other operators meaning other airplanes; that is, other operators being air, land, or maritime platforms.
The ability for the F-35 pilot to control the battle space in its entirety means that people operating in the surface fleet, for example, need to understand what the F-35 can achieve.
Because if they don’t, they don’t know what the F-35 pilot is going to ask them to do when they ask them to do it.
So they have to instinctively understand the capability of the airplane, because every, every platform involved in the battle space now is part of what the F-35 air system can deliver in terms of operational effect.