Being inside the F-35, Morris says, is completely different. The airplane carries a suite of sensors that are the equivalent of having an AWACS and JSTARS on board. The F-35 doesn’t listen to surveillance systems, it is the surveillance system. Its internal computer reads and analyzes reams of data collected by the sensors—a process called sensor fusion, designed by Lockheed—then displays the results on the pilot’s dashboard instantaneously. Morris could now spend much less time figuring out what was going on, and more time deciding what to do about it.
