Later this year, the first Lockheed Martin F-35B will land on HMS Queen Elizabeth – a key milestone in the return of RN Carrier Strike. TIM ROBINSON catches up with RAF F-35B test pilot, Sqn Ldr ANDY EDGELL (UK MoD First of Class Flight Trials (FOCFT) Lead Test Pilot), as he and the F-35B Integrated Test Force prepare for the culmination of a decade plus of flight test and engineering development.

As FOCFT Sqn Ldr Edgell is at the epicentre of a vast flight test and engineering effort to get the F-35B ready for flight trials on HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier later this year. (BAE Systems)

It has been a long and winding road but this year should mark two historic milestones for UK military aviation. The first is the return of RAF 617Sqn from the US to RAF Marham as the first UK-based stealth fighter squadron – opening a new chapter in British aviation history. The second, scheduled for the fourth quarter of this year, will see Lockheed Martin F-35Bs land and take-off from HMS Queen Elizabeth (QEC) for the first time – a historic event in return of ‘big decks and fast jets’ to the UK military. (See Countdown to Carrier Strike, AEROSPACE, October 2017).

We caught up with Squadron Leader Andy Edgell (UK MoD First of Class Flight Trials (FOCFT) Lead Test Pilot) during a recent visit to BAE Systems Warton where, along with his other colleagues in the joint US/UK ITF at Paxtutent River, Cdr Steve Crockatt (RN and Team Leader), Cdr Nath Gray (RN), Sqn Ldr Ben Hullah (RAF) and Pete ‘Wizzer’ Wilson (BAE Systems), they are now working to explore the most challenging parts of the envelope and prepare for F-35B/QEC trials with one of the world’s most advanced flight simulators.

AEROSPACE: Where are we now in the F-35B flight test campaign?

Sqn Ldr Andy Edgell: Last year we completed Phase Two of the ski-jump testing at Pax River. Phase One was started in 2015 and that was ultimately the de-risking phase to make sure all the models and predictions were correct, or at least as close as they needed to be to progress to Phase Two. Phase One was incredibly successful in that it identified an area where the models needed to be updated. They duly were and then we embarked on Phase Two in 2017 over a few months. We conducted over 100 ski-jump launches in nine different weapons configurations and the summary from Phase Two was that there is ‘nothing’ significant to report. As flight testers, ‘nothing significant’ to report from Phase Two is as good as it gets. Ultimately it proved the whole concept of the de-risking phase three years ago, followed by the intense Phase Two as the right path, because we are now ready for first class flight trials,

" In my first hover in the F-35 I sat there at that moment, and looked around, realised I was stationary in every axis, and thought "Goodness gracious me, the guys who designed this are absolute geniuses.”"

At Pax River’s ski-jump we did the full range of asymmetric stores, the full range of gross weights, the full range of centre of gravities, the full range of headwinds, and crosswinds that we can reasonably expect to get from a fixed ski-jump. Of course there are limitations. The ski-jump at Pax River points in a certain direction that’s not going to change. Realistically you cannot expect to get 50kt of headwind and you can’t expect to get the level of crosswind that you need so, within reason, we tested the full range that was available to us. For outside of that range, that’s why we use this simulator at BAE Systems Warton.

The F-35B/QEC integration simulator at BAE Systems Warton is playing a key role by allowing F-35B test pilots to push the aircraft to the edge of the envelope and construct a safety case and flight test plan. (BAE Systems)

AEROSPACE: Give us a sense of how much pre-planning you need for a F-35B test flight

AE: It could be one day that you are in the sim for a good two or three hours with your control room team for the following day and you are preparing for, say an AMRAAM firing, which is a challenging condition to get to in speed, Mach and altitude and G and so forth. What we could do is go up and ensure we had a dedicated KC-10 to give us as much gas as we could ever desire and we could incrementally determine what profile we had to fly to actually get to the test point condition. However, that is an enormous waste of everyone’s time and money. We don’t do that. We put a significant amount of advance work in the simulator. To the extent that, by the time I get in the aircraft, I know exactly what profile I have to fly. I know exactly what gamma, (talking about the descent path of the aircraft), I know whether it’s a point 0.5G descent down to that gamma or if it’s a 0.7G descent down to that gamma because I know the most efficient way to get there to ensure that I actually get to the test point. Let’s say, on Monday you spend a significant amount of time in the simulator, designing the profile, ensuring that you’re going to run at maximum efficiency once you actually get airborne the following day. You've got a significant test plan that you need to read and understand and you have a brief to prepare for, and you have every consideration for the following day. That preparation can be one full day.

AEROSPACE: What does a typical flight test day look like for an ITF F-35 test pilot?

AE: The first thing to say about a typical day at the ITF is there is no typical day at the ITF at all. They are incredibly variable, the thing is that every day is diverse because every line of testing is diverse.

The following day, you may have a 6:30 brief to ensure that we are airborne, full of fuel and ready to get into our allocated range space for a missile shot test. So you come in for a 6:30 brief, a brief ordinarily of a complex mission will be somewhere between 45 minutes and maybe an hour thirty. Once briefed, maybe you’ll get in the seat around 9:30 so the control room is manned up. You’ve got into your gear, stepped to the aircraft, met your crew chief and your ground crew, done the walkaround, jumped in the seat, flashed it up, talked to the control room, they’re listening to you, you get your chase on board, so he’s started his jet up which is typically an F-18 and then we'll launch and we’ll go out and perform the flight test. Flight tests can be anywhere from five minutes long, an airborne, turn downwind, and come in for a vertical landing that might be a test point. Or it may be that you end up doing five test points, and that might take you five hours. There is absolutely no standard day in any way shape or form. Ultimately, you’ll come back after multiple times on the tanker or multiple times through the hot pits, land, shut down and go for a comprehensive debrief. You’ll then start writing your post-flight reports, and then you'll start putting your mind to the next day. Before you know it you’ve done 12 hours at work

Over 100 F-35B ski-jump launches have been conducted at the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, in preparation for the first sea trials with QEC later this year. (US DoD)

AEROSPACE: How many people are in the ITF flight test ‘mission control’, monitoring your flights?

AE: For a complex mission it would not be abnormal to see anywhere from 30 to maybe 45 or 50 engineers in the room. There’s a large oval table, with two rows of seats down either side but the team around the table is your crew. They are the guys in mission control with a lead role. Then you have the non-lead roles of each discipline sat behind in the cheap seats. There's a seating pattern to the ITF. At the head of the table is my seat, and then to my right, is the Test Conductor. The TC is the person that you will be talking to because you’re on hot mic when you fly, so your microphone is live to whoever wants to listen to it. Your TC is your ‘partner in crime’. Next to them is the TD, which is the Test Director. The Test Director is slightly more experienced and also has a bigger picture. He’s the strategic thinker and TC is the tactical thinker.

You have your TC and your TD, and then all the way around the table you have the individual disciplines. You will have engine, propulsion, fuel, hydraulics, loads and weapons, so you know exactly where to go because there are so many people on the ITF and it certainly used to be that you can’t remember everyone's names. It actually can be quite awkward at times but you say: “What do you think Loads?” Because you know where to look but you can’t remember their name. We endeavour to learn as many names as possible.

Expensive flight tests can be scrubbed in many ways - including fishing boats in weapon release areas. (US Navy)

AEROSPACE: What sort of things could scrub a flight test mission?

AE: You may find that you do a lot of that preparatory work and then you don’t actually get to go and fly. After the briefing that you’ll go back to your pilot office where the operations room is as well. You'll now start looking at all of the other assets available. Is the tanker tracking on time? Is the range still available? Is the weather going to be suitable? Often something has gone awry because there are so many external organisations, and external factors, that the planets really do need to align to get a test mission successfully off the ground and be successfully executed. It can be quite disappointing that you can do a significant amount of work and never actually get to fly the mission, because the tanker may have gone unserviceable, the weather may not be supportive, something may have happened with the range space, someone may have organised a fishing competition directly beneath the area where you want to drop a weapon and now the weather isn’t suitable with the area that you're going to have to go to and you cancel.

Once airborne we are connected to the ITF control room via live telemetry which gives the engineers a frightening amount of information. So you will often find that the control room will tell you some remedial action that needs to be performed,and the pilot actually hasn’t got any information that there is anything wrong with the jet because, frankly, there isn't much significantly wrong with the aircraft because it has been designed to inform the pilot when something has happened that he needs to respond to. So often the control room will see lower level faults and they’ll ask you to perform some remedial action just to clear these and then you carry on with your day. Without the control room you would know nothing at all.



Fifty-six years ago, on 3 February 1962, test pilot Bill Bedford landed the Hawker P.1127 on HMS Ark Royal – the first ever vertical landing by a fixed-wing aircraft on a carrier. (RAeS/NAL)

AEROSPACE: How does the F-35B compare to the Harrier in terms of shipborne operations?

AE: The workload comparison is a different league. The reduction in workload is significant and I have often mentioned how, in the Harrier, the recovery to the carrier is something to be mindful of. It is continuously with you throughout your combat mission. You have one job as a pilot which is to go and execute the task. Whether that is close air support, whether it’s defensive counter air, offensive counter air, you have a role. Your role is not to take off and land from the aircraft carrier. However, I would say that the percentage of your brain that is occupied with the administrative task of launching from and recovering to the carrier is far greater than it should be. Ultimately, it should be zero, because that is not your role. In the Harrier, recovery in a sea state six with a heavily pitching, rolling deck is with you, and it ‘ring fences’ a certain amount of your mental capacity throughout and that is the difference between the legacy system and the F-35.

It allows the pilot to entirely concentrate on the mission and some people, including myself, would then argue that post-mission you can subsequently enjoy the recovery to the ship. You can marvel and that is the right word. You can sit there in the hover, having executed your operational task, and you have a moment to sit there and marvel. I will never forget my first hover in the Harrier and I will never forget my first hover in the F-35B. My first hover in the Harrier is akin to trying to stay alive on a unicycle and I don’t think I made much of a conscious thought at the time in the hover. It was only once I managed to get her down on deck safely, and then retrospectively I thought: “How on earth did I manage that?”

Whereas in my first hover in the F-35B I sat there at that moment, and looked around, realised I was stationary in every axis, and thought “Goodness gracious me, the guys who designed this are absolute geniuses.” People say it is a ‘fifth-generation aircraft’ and they are referring to it's stealth characteristics and all the nominal mission systems capabilities on board but it is also a generational advance in pure-control law flight control system, and reduction in workload for the pilot.

AEROSPACE: Why is the F-35B simulator at BAE Systems Warton needed? How realistic is it?

AE: We are talking orders of magnitude more realistic than any simulator I’ve been in before. It is truly exhausting for the pilots and the engineers because we’re not going and testing the handling qualities, the performance of the aircraft, and the workload induced on the pilot in benign conditions. Because we’ve already done that.

You always start in the middle of the envelope in flight tests. You start in the safe place where workload is low and you gradually expand out in every direction with every variable and we find ourselves here in the Warton sim, at the edge of all of those variables, where workload is significantly higher, the handling qualities are slightly degraded, purely because you are asking more and more of the pilot and the aircraft. You marry that up with just how realistic the simulator is. As I’ve said it before, it is by far, and we're talking orders of magnitude, more realistic than any simulator I've been in before. You put those together, and you’re exhausted at the end of the day.

The final goal – HMS Queen Elizabeth at sea. (MoD)

AEROSPACE: What is left to do this year before the actual ship flight trials?

AE: First class flight trials are less than 12 months away, so people assume we are starting to get our head around it. However, we are not starting to get our head around it now. We have been getting our head around it for the best part of a decade. If you speak to some of the people on the team, their experience exceeds a decade with first of class flight trials and I tip my cap to the perseverance and the personal investment of many individuals.

What we are doing in the sim is demonstrating or gathering the engineering evidence that we can put forth hand-in-hand with land-based ski-jumps to demonstrate that the envelope that we want to go and test this year is a safe envelope. That final envelope, our recommendation to be put into the release to service for front line operators, that will come at the end of the trial.

Currently our focus right now is on digesting the Test Execution Package (TEP). This TEP has two components, it has a joint test plan and it has a test safety supplement. The joint test plan is a 300-page document. It is how we are going to embark, progress through the trial and disembark. It has every single test point in, every single tolerance, constraint and limitation. It is our Bible for test execution that everyone signs up to.

Now we go through what we call a technical readiness review board at the ITF. You get all of the engineering leadership and military leadership to go word by word through this test plan, this massive document, and ultimately it's a ‘murder board’. What we, (in cohorts with the QEC integration team) have produced is what we honestly think is a safe and efficient manner to execute the first class flight trials.. If it gets through the technical murder board, then it will be signed off in the Technical Readiness Review Board, and it will advance to the Executive Review Board in the middle of March. Every assumption, everything is analysed, the risk is truly determined and finalised. Once the test plan is approved for execution, we can say we know exactly what we have to do. We don't have to deliberate over any aspect of the trial anymore. We have our Bible.

Sqn Ldr Edgell performs a walk around of an F-35B during sea trials aboard USS America in 2016. (US DoD)

AEROSPACE: What happens then?

AE: Then there will be pilot readiness, pilot workup, pilot qualifications, work in the simulators in Warton and at Pax River and also various workup and training flights in the F-35B at Pax River to include going off the land-based ski jump.

That gets the pilots ready to go but we are one tiny piece of an enormous puzzle and this piece alone is not going to execute that trial. Admittedly, we are the centrepiece and that’s what people like to ask about: ‘Who will be the first person to land on the carrier?’ and ‘How would it feel to do that?’ I accept that but what I am adamant about with every interview and discussion I have is that our tiny speck, our tiny piece of the puzzle in the middle, is nothing. Filling up the entire puzzle, 99% of it is everyone else. Whether that is the individual personnel on the flight deck or five decks below or whether it's the engineers at Pax River or Fort Worth or Warton, the people over at Edwards on 17 Sqn, there are so many people involved in this. As test pilots we’re just this tiny speck in the middle.

Tim Robinson

