The F-35 Lightning II, which is stealthily designed to evade radar, was initially thought to be a complete stealth vehicle by most of the people who had sighted it. Few of them could actually imagine that in the future, this very plane could become the most heavily armed fighter. But, the reality is that the situation has changed exactly the opposite, as the pilots took over the command of what they called “Beast Mode”—a function that releases devastating firepower by giving up some stealthiness.
The concept of the F-35 was fabricated jet-wise with invisibility as its very first feature. Alongside its so-called stealthy look, the engineers engineered the methods through which the superjet was to carry its weapons so as to have minimal friction with radar rays.
It did bring the trade-off of being less powerful overall compared to older types of aircraft like F-16 or F/A-18, though. Nevertheless, by 2018, experimental endeavors had given the concept more gas. Scientists started to go off the design they had at first by using the external pylons, attaching some extra weapons, and even the aviators they expected had seen the results were amazed.
The F-35 was, just like that, able to transport a stockpile that weighed 21,700 pounds, almost equal to the maximum amount of bombs that B-52s were capable of carrying by the Vietnam era. The most significant difference was that while this ancient bomber was just capable of dropping its bombs and escaping, this current fighter could load the fateful payload with surgical precision and fight the target’s air support as well.
This was made possible due to the avionics sensor fusion system. It granted a single pilot immeasurable knowledge and management led to the utilization of several precision-guided bombs as well as multiple missiles simultaneously—something that was exclusively available for early generations of fighters only in their dreams.
On the other hand, the externally loading of weapons was not without cons. As it is generally known in the world of military technology, the stealthiness of aircraft gradually decreases as more weapons are attached to them, and thus they become more visible to radar. Though it was still there, the detracting effect was nowhere near as substantial as the critics imagined.
Though the risk was almost compensated for by sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities. F-35 dealt with remarkable jamming, signature management, and defensive countermeasures, allowing it to remain a hard-to-kill target even in this less-stealthy “dirty” mode.
They witnessed the effectiveness of the strategy in large-scale drills. For example, the stunt with F-35s thoroughly armed during Northern Edge training in Alaska, where they ran through the exercises that the usual old strike packages did not have access to due to air defense blockades, was very illustrative of the power the approach had.
Actually, the aircraft had better results than those of the specially-designed bombers, like F-15E, thus strongly supporting the idea that a fifth-generation fighter could not only master stealth but also carry out the heaviest strike missions with equal efficiency.
As time goes on, the Future of Beast Mode still has room for improvement. The installation of new technologies for a future weapons system, such as AIM-260 air-to-air missile and hypersonic weapons, is just the beginning of F-35’s change to a more diversified and more flexible fighter. It will remain at the forefront of air combat because of its ability to change with the times, no matter how far in the future.
The selective stealth fighter turned out to be one of the most flexible strike platforms ever built. The existence of Beast Mode as just an add-on was not sufficient to achieve what was achieved by modern warfare to be redefined as fundamentally impossible.