Greeting me upon arrival in the doorway to his office, US Air Force Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, dressed in an olive green flight suit, offered his hand.
From his direct eye contact, exact manner of speaking, and overall subject-matter discipline, it's clear he's a command pilot.
I'm here to ask him about milestones, setbacks, misconceptions, and his work as a wing commander, pilot, and now director of the integration office for America's priciest weapons system: the F-35 Lightning II.
Before coming to the Pentagon to head the integration office, Pleus spent 24 years flying the F-16 with just north of 2,200 flight hours, followed by two years as the commander of the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke Air Force Base.
While at Luke, Pleus welcomed a unique challenge: Develop the next-generation of lethal F-35 fighter pilots.
Within a few months, the first student for the 56th Fighter Wing began F-35 training — it was Pleus.
Now headquartered at the Pentagon for a little over five months, Pleus is the single voice for the US Air Force to the F-35's Joint Program Office.
I glance at the commemorative plaques lining his office walls before he offers me a seat at a polished conference table.
"So what's the biggest misconception about this program that you want to leave behind in 2016?" I ask.
'It's not a real airplane'
"I'll use an analogy that I heard a few years ago," Pleus began.
"The F-35 was an airplane on paper only," he added. "The F-35 was a capability that was only on paper — it has not been proven. Yeah, maybe there are some test pilots that are flying it, but it's too far away and it's not a real airplane."
"That is my overall biggest misconception about the airplane," said Pleus.
"We have pilots that are flying it and executing missions today that simulate a combat environment, and we know that this airplane has capabilities that are far better than we could have ever hoped for in a fourth-generation aircraft."
"I can tell you that it is by far the best platform I've ever flown in my entire life, and at that you would have to take me on my word."
In August 2016, Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, commander of Air Combat Command,
(IOC) for a squadron of F-35A's — a significant breakthrough for the weapons program, which has been beset by design flaws, cost overruns, and technical challenges.
"Initial operating capability is a huge milestone because what you're saying is this is not necessarily just a developmental airplane anymore. This is a real thing. We could on that day have sent those airplanes into combat the next day," Pleus said.
Since IOC, the US Air Force has trained more than 120 pilots in 100 F-35As, accruing a combined total of 75,000 hours of flight time.
'One our adversaries should fear'
In preparing to sit down with Pleus, I recalled comments he made at the Air Force Association's annual conference in September. "In terms of lethality and survivability, the aircraft is absolutely head and shoulders above our legacy fleet of fighters currently fielded," he said at the time. "This is an absolutely formidable airplane, and one our adversaries should fear."
So I followed up, asking him, as one of the few people who have flown both an F-16 and an F-35, what's it like to engage an F-35?
"You never knew I was there," he said with a smile. "You literally would never know I'm there. I flew the F-35 against other fourth-generation platforms and we killed them and they never even saw us."
"If you were to engage an F-35 in say, a visual dogfight capability," he added, "the capabilities of the F-35 are absolutely eye-watering compared to a fourth-generation fighter."
"The airplane has unbelievable maneuvering characteristics that make it completely undefeatable in an air-to-air environment. So if it's a long-range contact, you'll never see me and you'll die, and if it's within visual-range contact you'll see me and you're gonna die and you're gonna die very quickly," said Pleus, who has 153 flight hours in the F-35.
To date, the US is slated to buy 2,443 F-35s at an acquisition cost of $379 billion. In December, the Joint Program Office released the finalized price for the most recent production contract for the fifth-generation jet.
After a little more than 14 months of negotiations between the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin, the ninth Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP-9) contract for 57 F-35 jets was valued at $6.1 billion. The LRIP-9, which is essentially the ninth batch of jets, includes 34 jets for the US and 23 for five other countries.
The US Air Force, getting the lion's share of F-35s, bought 42 planes in LRIP-9 and paid $102.1 million a jet, which includes aircraft, engine, and fee.
By comparison, that $102.1 million is down from the previous contract by 5.5%, which equates to $5.9 million.
The first step on the F-35's journey to becoming the centerpiece of fusion warfare began on October 26, 2001, when the Pentagon awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth more than $200 billion to build the next-generation stealth strike-fighter.
The Pentagon's request was colossal: Develop a supersonic fifth-generation aircraft with the capability to replace four existing kinds of US military aircraft but also to be used by multiple international partners.
What's more, design three variants of the fighter in order to accommodate the unique needs of each sister-service branch: the F-35A for the Air Force, F-35B for the amphibious Marine Corps, and F-35C for the Navy.
Having already engineered stealth aircraft — F-117A Nighthawk and F-22 Raptor — Lockheed Martin was playing on their home court.
The cradle of the F-35, with its slick floors, high ceilings, brightly painted assembly areas, and machinery hum, is where I saw the Joint Strike Fighter for the first time.
Riding in a golf cart through Lockheed Martin's mile-long production facility in Fort Worth, Texas, I watched the neatly organized bins of nuts and bolts, jet wings, and sophisticated electronics evolve into a seafoam green airframe.
Once assembled, the planes roll into a windowless complex devoted to draping the F-35 in its invisibility cloak. "This room is the most advanced painting facility in the world," retired US Air Force pilot and F-35 simulation instructor Rick Royer told me as we entered the Aircraft Final Finishes bay.
It's here where the jet receives its highly classified stealth technology that makes it almost invisible to enemy radar. It's here where the US military leaps ahead of emerging threats. It's here where the most expensive weapons system in American history is crafted.
And whatever its shortcomings, developing a platform of this magnitude is undoubtedly impressive.
'The only experts in the F-35 business, are those that fix, maintain, and fly the F-35'
At the aforementioned Air Force Association's annual conference, Pleus sat on a panel alongside commander of Air Combat Command, Gen. Herbert "Hawk" Carlisle, F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Program executive officer Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, and commander of the 388th Fighter Wing Col. David Lyons.
Pleus began his remarks, his delivery blunt and confident, "I'm hopeful that as we continue to grow this fleet, we all take the opportunity to form opinions on this airplane from experts. And the only experts in the F-35 business, are those that fix, maintain, and fly the F-35 on a day-to-day basis."
"Whether they be at Eglin, Luke, Edwards, Nellis, or Hill, if you go and talk to them they will give you the ground truth. If you are forming your opinions by somebody that has not fixed or flown the airplane I would tell you you're wrong."
The room couldn't have been more quiet.
Sitting at the head of a conference table in his office, Pleus had the same intensity I remember from the panel discussion at AFA.
"This airplane is out there."
"We got real pilots flying it, real maintenance guys working on it, and if you ask the experts — and my definition of an expert is you either flew it, fought against it, or you fixed it — if one of those three things you are now considered an expert on the F-35," Pleus said.
"If you haven't done any of those things, go find one of those people and ask them what they think about the airplane, and they'll tell you the truth."
At first blush, the F-35 is easy to criticize, with its much chronicled cost overruns, faulty ejection seats, and helmet-display issues, among other problems.
While I won't rehash, Pleus noted that the F-35A's 75,000 flying hours didn't go off without a hitch and addressed some of the program's more substantial setbacks in 2016.
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forgets: