Emily Thompson has just come in the history of the u.s. air force. This pilot of the F-35A is the first woman to have led a mission with the fighter jet and the flagship of the US Air Force, reports Le Parisien. An advance that could help change attitudes in an environment deemed to be very masculine. There was nothing yet to suggest that this pioneer can be found in a cockpit.
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first engineer in the u.s. army, Emily Thompson realized that she could become a pilot. It is aboard an F-16 that she made her first experiences of flight, as stated in Business Insider. She then joined the very closed club of women pilots of the F-35. For its first mission at the controls of F-35A, Emily Thompson was accompanied by a technical team consisting only of women.
Mission kept secret
At the start of the air base of Al Dhafra, united arab Emirates, in early June, she then moved to an undisclosed location by the u.s. air force. “Being the first woman is a huge honor for me,” she commented in an official statement. According to her, ” the opportunity for women to excel with the F-35 is actually present.” His code name, “Banzai” is the picture of the energy she deploys in volume
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The F-35 fleet is made up of three different models. This fighter is the weapon of the most expensive ever created by the u.s. army. Its development and its supply have resulted in more than $ 400 billion, according to Bloomberg News. The United States then spent more than 1,000 billion dollars for the maintenance of the fleet. The F-35 program has multiplied the miss in recent years. It has in particular been the subject of complaints of accuracy problems with the gun firing made by Lockheed Martin. 873 software defects have been detected by 2018. Not anything to thwart the plans of Emily Thompson, who capitalize on this first successful mission to establish itself in the US Air Force.
