Category: Aviation

Imagine for a moment, if you will, you’re a fighter pilot in an air force whose home station has just fallen victim to an airstrike. You look out across the airfield and see the runway has been decimated. Some of the aircraft themselves have taken hits, but still others have survived unscathed. With no runway, […]

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 […]

Yesterday, we mentioned the opening salvos of the Battle of Britain, the only campaign in the history of warfare to be fought strictly with airpower. The anniversary was commemorated in London in a variety of ways, to include a changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace where all of the participants were wearing RAF uniforms, […]

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 […]

We hope you’ve had a great weekend, FighterSweep fans! For those of you dads out there, we wish you a Happy Father’s Day! You know we love airplanes and we love flying, so it shouldn’t shock anyone when we get excited about the opportunity to go inside the cockpit–regardless of what it is, where it […]

Happy Saturday, FighterSweep Fans! In our “From the Cockpit” series, we’ve brought you a number of kick-ass videos from the Navy’s Strike Fighter community, as well as various Air Force units and even a couple international ones. This is the first time we’ve feature a United States Marine Corps squadron’s “Cruise Video” and we’re excited […]

Alright FighterSweep fans, we know that you absolutely love to watch airplane videos! So do we, as a matter of fact…a lot. That being the case, just for you, we have put together this little gem and we’re sure you’re going to love it. As a group, we have amassed quite a collection of footage […]

Alright FighterSweep fans, we know that you absolutely love to watch airplane videos! So do we, as a matter of fact…a lot. That being the case, just for you, we have put together this little gem and we’re sure you’re going to love it. As a group, we have amassed quite a collection of footage […]

While it may look easy to the casual observer, air-to-air refueling is an endeavor that can be wrought with peril. Even so, it is a capability developed over decades that allows American airpower to be anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice. Whether or not you’re training at home or have just pulled off […]

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania–all former members of the Cold War-era Soviet Union–joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in March of 2004. In doing so, the task of maintaining air sovereignty in the skies over the Baltic Sea fell became NATO‘s full-time responsibility. That Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) mission consists of member nations providing aircraft and […]

In this day and age, there is a great deal of concern over what things cost. Over the years, the Department of Defense has been notorious for its spending habits, cost overruns on weapons system development and production, and other things. We’ve all heard the stories–$200.00 hammers, $600.00 toilet seats, and the recent announcement that […]