WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Lieutenant Colonel Christine Mau has become the first female pilot in US military history to fly a F-35 Lighting II jet, the US Air Force stated in a release.
“The Department of Defense welcomed its first female F-35 Lightning II pilot here May 5,” the Air Force said on Thursday. “Lt. Col. Christine Mau, the 33rd Fighter Wing Operations Group deputy commander, completed her first training flight in the single-seat fifth-generation fighter following 14 virtual training missions in the full simulator at the F-35 Academic Training Center.”
“The plane [F-35] doesn’t know or care about your gender as a pilot, nor do the ground troops who need your support,” Mau concluded. “You just have to perform. That’s all anyone cares about when you’re up there — that you can do your job, and that you do it exceptionally well.”
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine and all-weather stealth multirole fighting jet that is undergoing testing and final development by the United States, according to media reports.
