Friday was a good day when I finished the first block of five rides without much trouble. These rides are flown to make sure we learned what we should of in pilot training, and they also give us a chance to shake rust off our tactical formation. Mine flights all felt pretty solid. We also started with some "baby"
BFM in preparation for the Offensive
BFM (
OBFM) block of four flights, which I start tomorrow. The instructors here are a lot more picky then at Columbus with the admin stuff like I talked about before. Starting the aircraft, moving all the right switches at the right time and being on the right radio frequency on time are things they'll nail you on if it's not right. Attention to detail is what you'll hear a lot if you come through
IFF. They'll hammer you for not flying good tactical formation too because it should be second nature by now.
OBFM is just like it sounds...we'll be flying behind another T-38 (on offense) learning how to shoot missiles and fire our gun at him to kill him. The dude in front will be flying what they call defensive
BFM (
DBFM), although he's pretty much a steady platform for me to practice on. There are different set-ups and flying "drills" we go through to learn the basics of air-to-air engagement while in the
OBFM and
DBFM phases. After four
OBFM rides, I'll move into
DBFM and then from there into High Aspect
BFM (
HABFM). I'll talk to all of that later.
BFM in general is an aggressive type of flying...a lot more so than pilot training. We've learned how to fly, now we're learning how to use our jets as a weapon. Yanking and banking all over the place, in afterburner on second and in idle the next. The stick full aft to full forward, full right then left...all while trying to keep the bad guy in sight, employ your weapons and keep situational awareness of what's going on around you. It's definitely a good workout both physically and mentally! But, that's why I love if...it's a challenge and a ton of fun! God knew where I should be and I'm grateful for it! OK, I'm going to finish studying and then catch a movie!
The next phase of training is surface attack (SA), or in other words we're learning the basics of dropping bombs. We do a variety of different passes on the range here close to the base to simulate bombing (it's all done electronically by the jet) a target they have set up. I think it's an old Army truck or something like that. We bomb at 10, 20, 30 and 45 degree angles in the conventional pattern. The steeper angles really feel like your racing at the ground pretty fast since we aim to drop our "bomb" at 420 knots at a predetermined altitude specific to each degree. For the 10 degree pass, we fly a rectangular pattern at 2100' before rolling in on the target. For the others it's, 4800', 7000' and 14000' respectively. Once we pickle the "bomb", we execute what they call a safe escape maneuver. This involves getting to 4g's within 2 seconds and pulling the nose of the jet to 30 degrees nose high before rolling to the crosswind leg of the rectangular pattern. When I drop bombs for real in the future, this escape maneuver will be done to keep my jet from flying through the fragmentation pattern of the bombs. Once a bomb explodes it sends a bunch of shrapnel into the air and that's a bad thing to have fly down the intake of your engine! I'm going to enjoy this phase a lot...it's closer to the ground and there's a lot going on! After surface attack I have two High Aspect BFM (HABFM) flights, and that will be it. In two months I'll be flying the F-16 and soon after I'll be dropping bombs for real! Oh yeah, I'm a 1st lieutenant now...can't believe I've been in the AF for two years already!
