First RAF Pilot Flies F-35

Posted 26 January 2010

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Photo by Andy Wolfe

Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Steve Long becomes the first active duty service pilot from the United Kingdom to fly the F-35 Lightning II. He flies BF-2 from NAS Patuxent River, Maryland, logging the aircraft’s eighteenth mission. Long flies the aircraft to 20,000 feet before landing 1.3 hours later. The RAF pilot has more than 2,200 hours of flight time including more than 100 sorties over Kosovo and Bosnia, Sierra Leone, and Iraq. Long currently flies the F/A-18 as an exchange pilot with the US Marine Corps.

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