NATO pilots break up dogfight between F-35 and Eurofighter with paper airplanes

• Two NATO fighter pilots discussed their recent Eurofighter vs. F-35 air combat competition.
• The German pilot said his US opponent's F-35 had commendable stealth capabilities.
• The pilots used paper airplanes to talk about their fight and various maneuvers.

Two NATO fighter jet pilots recently shared their experiences after facing off in a “dogfight” in the skies over Germany.

In a video shared by the U.S. Department of Defense late last month, German pilot 1st Lt. Alexander Grant and American pilot Captain Patrick Pearce discuss their fight during an air combat competition at Ramstein Air Base and the differences between their respective Eurofighter and F-35 jets. They used paper airplanes to demonstrate and talk about their maneuvers.

The U.S. military said the event was the first one-on-one competition of its kind hosted by the U.S. Air Force in Europe and “allowed NATO fighter pilots to test their skills against aircraft with which They had never fought before, which presented an invaluable opportunity to familiarize themselves with Allied equipment and tactics.

Grant flew the Eurofighter Typhoon, a European fighter made by a consortium of Airbus Defense and Space, BAE Systems and Leonardo, while Pearce flew a US Air Force F-35A, a fifth-generation jet manufactured by Lockheed Martin.

In the competition, neither Grant nor Pearce knew they would face each other. Pearce said they were given a piece of paper listing an airborne location to which they would fly before engaging in dogfight, a loosely used term for air-to-air combat.

As the plane approached the merger, Pearce, a US Air Force pilot who goes by the call sign “Hobbit,” suddenly spotted his enemy and thought to himself: Oh man, there's a Eurofighter.

“I’ve never seen an F-35 so close,” said Grant, call sign “Stitch,” explaining that he only trained with other Eurofighters in Germany.

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The competition allowed both pilots to understand the benefits of their jets. Grant said the Eurofighter Typhoon had “a little bit more thrust,” but he said that if dogfighting were real, given the fifth-generation fighter's stealth, the F-35 would “probably kill me out of visual range before I even knew it.” that he was there.” Skills.

In the video, Grant and Pearce used paper airplanes to demonstrate how their jets interacted in the sky. Pearce said during the dogfight that the agile fourth-generation Eurofighter Typhoon was able to win by positioning itself behind the F-35 and aiming weapons at the jet, even though the fighters were not actually armed.

However, it is difficult to get into this position and it is easy to inadvertently give up the advantage, but Grant was able to keep his closing speed under control.

“You can just feel it in the pit of your stomach,” Pearce said, saying it was “like man, this guy just won the fight.”

The strength of the much more advanced F-35, as Grant suggested in the video, lies not in fighting them at close range, but in stealth killing them out of visual range or using their onboard capabilities to attack other units in the area area to hold off for a kill.

Dogfights involve many high-speed maneuvers that put a lot of strain on pilots. “You’re under a lot of Gs,” Pearce said. “You're experiencing some pretty extreme flight dynamics.” In particular, it can put a lot of strain and pressure on the neck as pilots look around to keep an eye on their enemy.

The competition, according to the US military, “attracted more than 30 jets from nine allies, namely Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, die.” houses the headquarters of NATO’s Allied Air Command.