Air Force

Our Air National Guard friends flying the World’s Greatest Air Superiority Fighter™ have found themselves very busy as of late, with both Louisiana’s 159th Fighter Wing and Florida’s 125th Fighter Wing deployed to Europe as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve. That’s a lot of flying tennis courts in theater, and their presence is undoubtedly well-received by our NATO partners […]

We have discussed what it’s like to take on gas from the tanker in an F-15D, so today we’re going to look at the same evolution from the F-16C. This Viper pilot, one of FighterSweep’s very own contributors, is seen here traveling to an undisclosed location. The video starts as he moves in from the […]

[Editor’s Note–Yesterday, C.W. Lemoine a Naval Reserve F/A-18 pilot and prior AFRES Viper Driver, opined about several articles tied to this report. Most the pieces launched onto the Interwebs were designed specifically to raise hackles and blood pressure, and boy did they ever succeed! Here at FighterSweep, we do our best to present factual information […]

Happy Tanker Tuesday, FighterSweep Fans! As a follow-up to yesterday‘s aerial tour of the Hindu Kush mountains in Nuristan Province, we have a short, homegrown clip of a couple Boeing F-15Es rejoining with a KC-135 Stratotanker for gas over Afghanistan. With its conformal fuel tanks and two “bags” (wing tanks), the Dark Gray can carry […]

Barg-i Matal. It’s one of the most rugged, treacherous, and vertical districts in northeastern Afghanistan, largely walled off from the outside world by the Hindu Kush mountains. Very, very few people live there, which makes one wonder how it was also the site for some of the most ferocious battles for the U.S. Army’s 10th […]

One of the longest-standing questions I’ve been asked about the F-22A Raptor is this: “why is there no helmet-mounted display for the pilot? All the other jets have them, so why not the F-22?” I have heard a few reasons, and most have to do with the period of time when the Raptor was designed. […]

Overnight, a Lockheed-Martin F-16C Fighting Falcon assigned to the Arizona Air National Guard’s 162nd Fighter Wing crashed during a training mission. The incident occurred at approximately 8PM local time, with the aircraft coming down approximately five miles east of the Douglas Municipal Airport, approximately one hundred twenty miles from the 162nd’s base at Tucson International […]

At Eglin Air Force Base, the largest focus of operations–and therefore the component of activity receiving the most scrutiny–is the looming IOC deadline of the Lockheed-Martin F-35A Lightning II, currently scheduled for next year. Eglin, a sprawling complex located in the Florida panhandle, has been the USAF’s epicenter for all F-35 training since the first […]

Happy Saturday, FighterSweep Fans! We thank you once again for checking us out and following along with the men and women on the front lines of aerial warfare. This video is definitely one of the best offerings we’ve seen from an Air Force unit and puts us back inside the cockpit of the mighty Viper, […]

“Can you fly this morning? We’ve had fallout,” my Director of Operations asked. I had been sitting in the base hotel room, getting ready to go to the gym since I wasn’t scheduled to fly my last flight in the F-16 for a couple of hours. I had moved from Homestead, FL to New Orleans […]

“The weather is clear; you are executing a formation takeoff on Runway One-Seven-Right. At rotation, you hear a loud pop, bang, and buzz and the number two engine RPM rolls back. Lieutenant, you have the aircraft,” the instructor says as he stands behind the podium in the flight room reading the stand-up scenario of the […]

For Warrior Wednesday, we have decided to introduce you to another very good friend of ours. We’ve known Colonel Robert Novotny for a number of years, stemming back to his time as the commander of the 53rd Test and Evaluation Group at Nellis Air Force Base. He’s been instrumental in helping us research various topics […]