Photo By Airman 1st Class Dylan Myers | An F-35A Lightning II assigned to the Royal Netherlands Air Force takes off during...... read more read more
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Service members from the U.S., Royal Norwegian and the Royal Netherlands Air Force showcased readiness, interoperability and maintenance proficiency during Spartan Lightning at Ramstein Air Base, Feb. 6-7, 2025.
A total of seven F-35A Lightning II aircraft participated in the exercise, with pilots and maintainers represented from U.S., Norwegian, and Dutch air forces. In addition to hands-on training, simulated combat scenarios were offered to the F-35 pilots to achieve learning objectives pertaining to offensive and defensive counter air missions.
“This Spartan Lightning iteration was the first of its kind because we flew in seven F-35s to Ramstein for the pilots to participate in the simulator training and for the maintenance personnel to participate in cross-servicing of each other’s airplanes,” said Lt. Col. Jared Marvin, 5th Combat Training Squadron D Flight commander.
Experts providing F-35 tactics and intelligence subject matter experts facilitating mission planning environments executed scenarios during the simulations. This allows the participants to leverage their training to help them create tactical solutions and exercise eight ship operations, Marvin explained.
Spartan Lightning has been primarily a simulated training event until this year with the fly in as a new concept to the exercise. Having F-35s physically present allowed for integrated maintenance and communication between NATO Allies and partners to play out in real time.
“We wanted to focus on learning the differences and similarities between how each of our NATO Allies and partners accomplishes aircraft maintenance, with the ultimate goal being to support Agile Combat Employment objectives,” said Master Sgt. Chris Bryant, 495th Fighter Generation Squadron avionics section chief from RAF Lakenheath, United Kingdom. “This way we can have any of our allies and partners send their fighter aircraft and pilots to locations around the NATO theater and have the confidence that everyone is on the same page and the mission can continue to run smoothly.”
Exercises like Spartan Lightning create the space for countries with F-35s to work hand-in-hand to solve tactical problems, create connections between countries to solve future problems, and learn emerging baseline tactics to bring back to their countries so if F-35s are employed, they will seamlessly work together.
| Date Taken: | 02.11.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.11.2025 11:49 |
| Story ID: | 490539 |
| Location: | RHEINLAND-PFALZ, DE |
| Web Views: | 23 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Spartan Lightning: perfecting F-35 interoperability at RAB, by SrA Tabatha Chapman, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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