Nineteen months after the U.S. Air Force banned lightweight pilots from flying the F-35, the service is lifting the restriction....
LUKE AFB, Arizona - Jan 29, 2018
The U.S. Air Force finally is ready to welcome its second female F-35 pilot, now that enough aircraft have been upgraded with a new ejection seat designed to accommodate lightweight aircrew. As of Jan. 23, a government-industry team here at Luke AFB had retrofitted eight F-35As with the new ejection seat, which eventually will equip the entire fleet, maintainers told Aerospace DAILY during a recent visit. That is enough to allow the pilot, who is transitioning from another fighter, to begin training in the F-35 in February, Air Force spokeswoman Maj. Rebecca Heyse said. The Air Force declined to provide additional details on the pilot, including her name, or make her available for interviews until she progresses further in her training. The first and only other woman to fly the F-35, Lt. Col. Christine Mau, recently retired. Mau, a former F-15E Strike Eagle pilot and deputy commander of the 33rd Fighter Wing Operations Group, completed her first training flight in the F-35 at Eglin AFB, Florida, in May 2015. The Air Force banned pilots under 136 lb. from flying the F-35 in 2015, after discovering the design of the escape system posed a significant risk of neck damage or death during ejection to aircrew in that weight range. The service officially lifted the weight restriction in May 2017, after accepting seat-maker Martin-Baker’s plan to integrate a series of modifications to the seat that would allow lightweight pilots to safely fly the F-35. But integration of the modifications—a lightweight switch to delay deployment of the main parachute and a fabric “head support panel” between the parachute risers to protect the pilot’s head from moving backward during parachute opening—has been taking longer than planned due to challenges incorporating the new seat data into the fighter’s fleet management system, the Autonomic Logistics and Information System, Aerospace DAILY reported in September. Retrofitting more than 200 early versions of the F-35 already out in the fleet with the new configuration of the Martin-Baker seat will not be completed until about summer 2019, according to F-35 Joint Program Office spokesman Joe DellaVedova.
All new F-35s coming off the production line in Lot 10 and beyond will have the latest version of the seat, complete with the lightweight modification, DellaVedova noted. With the upgraded seat, the F-35 will be able to accommodate pilots weighing 103-245 lb. But until all the F-35s in the fleet are equipped with the new lightweight seat, the number of female F-35 pilots—who are typically smaller than their male counterparts—will be limited. “It is a significant problem,” said Lt. Col. Kathryn Gaetke, commander of the 309th Fighter Squadron and a career F-16 pilot, during a Jan. 24 interview here. Gaetke believes the danger posed by the unmodified ejection seat to lightweight pilots did not deter women from wanting to fly the F-35. But the weight restriction and lack of sufficient upgraded aircraft have "deterred people from choosing women to fly the F-35,” she said. Gaetke added that she “absolutely” saw women come through the pipeline who were routed to a different fighter instead of the F-35. “It’s not like they chose people and then said, ‘Oh, you were out because of your weight,’ but I think there’s definitely, absolutely been some tough decisions,” Gaetke said. “Nobody wanted to make that the reason, nobody wanted to exclude that population. It was just the nature of the beast.”
