EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska – Ensuring F-35A Lightning II student pilots are sufficiently trained requires hard work from various teams. Many of these teams work behind closed doors, where their impact may not always be seen upon first glance.
During the 58th Fighter Squadron’s temporary duty to Alaska, U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Toniann Peters, a 33rd Operations Support Squadron intelligence analyst, was one of the personnel on site to help the Basic-Course students complete their capstones.
“Fighter squadron intel will typically support pilots with whatever their sortie mission is that day,” said Peters. “We are the experts on what the adversaries are planning on doing.”
Peters supports student pilots by providing information about the threats they can and will face.
“The goal of brand-new pilots is to learn what the F-35A’s mission set is, because it’s a multi-role fighter,” said Peters. “We’ll either do an offensive counter air mission, or suppression of enemy air defense.”
Having a subject matter expert on site to provide pilots with information can also act as a contingency plan in the event of a network outage or disruption.
“There are resources available for the pilots, but if for any reason a network, power, or a system went down, they would have to rely on whatever is open source,” said Peters. “Some of that could be spot on or exaggerated. The pilot would also need to remember what they studied prior regarding red (adversarial) forces.”
From the beginning of pilot training to the end, intel analysts are steadfast in providing the resources the pilots need.
“There’s a lot of confidence now that they’re doing their capstones,” said Peters. “The B-Coursers were absorbing everything as they were learning, and now that they’re here, they’re getting to execute. I love seeing the growth.”