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A new glass ceiling is crossed. Captain Emily Thompson of the US Air Force has become the first female fighter pilot to fly the stealth aircraft F-35A, the crème de la crème of American aviation.
A very masculine universe has just been shaken up. US Air Force Captain Emily Thompson made history recently by becoming the first woman to fly the F-35A stealth plane in combat, the US Air Force announced this week.
And the maintenance team that helped her make this flight was entirely female, again a first.
"Being the first woman is a great honor. There are a lot of women who have come before me and some of them are already doing combat outings on other platforms. So, being the only person who receives this honor that means a lot. "said Thompson in an air force statement.
Nicknamed "Banzai", Emily Thompson took off from Al Dhafra Air Force Base in the United Arab Emirates to an undisclosed location in the Middle East, as revealed by a press release from the Central Command American Air Force. The captain, who had planned to be an engineer before realizing that she could fly instead of simply repairing planes, began her career in the air force by piloting F-16 Fighting Falcons, but was then transferred to the F-35A, the variant of the Lockheed Martin stealth fighter built for the air force.
As Business Insider points out, Emily Thompson is part of a small group of female F-35 pilots, but said that "the opportunity for women to really excel in the F-35 is definitely there."
"It was very stimulating," said first-class aviator Ashlin Randolph at the US Air Force site. The latter was a member of the arms loading crew, one of four on duty who assisted Thompson on his historic flight.
What is the F-35 stealth fighter?
The F-35 is the most expensive weapon system in the history of the United States military, with an estimated total development and acquisition cost of approximately $ 400 billion and an operating and maintenance cost of about 1.2 trillion dollars, Bloomberg News recently reported, citing Pentagon assessments. This technological toy first entered combat with the Israeli Air Force in May 2018, when the IAF commander, General Amikam Norkin, announced that Israel was "the first in the world to use the F-35 in operational activity ". The United States first used the advanced combat aircraft a few months later, in September 2018.
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