NATO fighter pilots break down their Eurofighter vs F-35 dogfight with cockpit video and paper airplanes

In the video, Grant and Pearce demonstrated how their jets interacted in the sky by using paper airplanes. Pearce said during the dogfight, the agile fourth-generation Eurofighter Typhoon was able to win by getting behind the F-35 and targeting the jet with guns, although the fighters weren’t actually armed.

It’s tough to get in that position, though, and easy to unintentionally cede the advantage, but Grant was able to keep his closure speed under control.

“You can just feel it in the pit of your stomach,” Pearce said, saying it’s “like man, this guy just won the fight.”

The strength of the much more advanced F-35, as Grant hinted at in the video, is not battling it out at close range, but rather stealth kills beyond visual range or using its onboard capabilities to quarterback other assets in the area for a kill.

Dogfighting involves a lot of high-speed maneuvers that put a lot of strain on the pilots. “You’re underneath a lot of Gs,” Pearce said. “You’re going through some pretty extreme flight dynamics.” In particular, it can really put a lot of strain and pressure on the neck as pilots look around to keep tabs on their enemy.

The competition, the US military said, “drew more than 30 jets from nine Allies, namely Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, which hosts the headquarters of NATO’s Allied Air Command.”