With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to use a visual aid. These visual aids that I will use are available for public distribution. I will be able to leave them with you and give you other versions of them if you need them.
Stealth is one of those elements of the description of this capability that has been very difficult to describe. The details of it are at the very highly classified level. But at an unclassified level I can provide a characterization.
On the lower portion of the chart I am showing you, we have three bars. On the left side is the level of capability used as the baseline, and it's a first- to third-generation capability. What it describes is the vulnerability to lethal surface-to-air missile shots. If you have a fourth-generation with the kind of low observable enhancements that are currently available on the market, you are able to decrease the vulnerability to lethal surface-to-air missile shots by 15%. That is quite significant. However, the 95% reduction that is available from the fifth generation, from the F-35, is truly a game changer.
Across the top, the slide shows how the game actually changes. The red blob on the slide is the area of vulnerability. You can see that when you change by 15%, that blob decreases somewhat, but the 95% reduction that is available from the fifth-generation F-35 changes the game such that the flexibility and the chance of mission success and the chance of survival—being able to bring the aircraft home to fight another day—are hugely increased. That is the value of stealth.