At Edwards Air Force Base, the 461st Flight Test Squadron is employing all three variants of the F-35 to test whether each variant’s on board Multifunction Advanced Data Link (MADL) could talk to each other during a hunt for Ground Based Air Defense System.
By U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Katerina Slivinske [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
According to Maj. Raven LeClair, the MADL architecture is divided into flight groups. The tests will determine whether the MADL can pass data accurately between flight groups using four or six aircraft during large force exercises and actual combat.