"Break right, Bogey your 6 o'clock, 1 mile, slightly high!"

The air-to-air phase of training is sweet, and we're only about two weeks away from finishing and getting into the air-to-ground stuff. A little over a week ago, I had the most fun flight next to my solo flight in the Viper. It was an Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM) flight as a 3-ship formation. It's the first flight where I felt that we were actually getting into the full up real thing of dog fighting as a team against the "enemy." My flight lead and I were "blue" air (the good guys) and #3 of the formation was "red" air (the single bad dude). Once up in the MOA we did a couple hard turns to test our bodies against the high g's we'd be experiencing on this flight. Everyone was feeling good, so we headed right into the fighting. I moved into my wingman position of 9,000'-12,000' at either lead's 3 or 9 o'clock and flew about 1,000' above his altitude. In this position I could check his 6 and keep my nugget on a swivel looking for red air and not worry so much about hitting him. Red air would fly around wherever he wanted to behind flight lead and I at about 1.5-2 miles, +/- 2,000' or so of our altitude in preparation to engage one of us. "Viper 1 ready, Viper 2 ready, Bogey ready" was called on the radio once in position and ready to fight. If you had been listening to the radios during our fights, this is what a typical engagement would have sounded like: "Viper, fights on! Viper 1, break right, Bogey your 6 o'clock, 1 mile, slightly high/low...Viper 1, tally one...Viper 1 engaged...Viper 2 supporting...Viper 1, merged hostile F-16...Viper 2, fox II/III...Vipers, bugout 150, Viper 2, kill hostile F-16, right turn,15 thousand, Viper 2...Viper 1 blind...Viper 2 is your right 3 o'clock, slightly low for 2 miles...Viper 1 visual." The break turn is a full up 9 g turn while putting out flares to defeat a IR missile shot. During all of this, I'm having to keep site of the two jets as they fight, fly my jet in such a way to lock up the bad guy with my radar and then shoot him without my flight lead being in the way...there's a lot going on. I'm sure the radio comm sounds like gibberish to most of you, but it's very important during a fight to keep it quick and precise. There are AF regulations that specify exactly what should be said during an engagement and when so a lot of time has to be spent studying it. I still jack it up sometimes, but it's getting better. The time between each of those calls will also vary in length depending on what's taking place in the fight at the time. The flight was an awesome flight to end the week on...the bigger picture of all our training is making more sense!

A few weeks ago, my flight commander left for his new assignment as the opposing solo on the United States Air Force Thunderbird demonstration team. I think that's pretty awesome, and could potentially see myself doing the same thing in the future if the opportunity presented itself. We're hoping to get up the Nelis AFB, NV as a class sometime in the next couple months to check the Thunderbirds out as well as some of the other cool stuff they have there at the base. I'll keep flying high and having a great time until the next post!