Friendly Enemies

How do you build a better Air Force? By enlisting your own pilots to try and kill your own pilots. It's called "wargames", but it's deadly serious stuff. Popular Mechanics has an article on the training going on to make our F-22 Raptor pilots the most lethal in the world. (via Instapundit)

From Lt. Col. D. Scott Brenton, who has flown F-16's for 20 years, including 750 hours of combat flight:

"We do everything we can to try and challenge them: We increase our total numbers, we regenerate, we electronically jam the environment. And we die," Brenton says. "We die wholesale. We are kill-removed repeatedly and then regenerated, and then we are killed again. The process would be demoralizing if we didn't maintain proper perspective. This is our job while we are here. What motivates us is the fact that we are training our brethren—and they are damn good at what they do."

That doesn't mean it's a cake-walk for the F-22 pilots, though:

Brenton says the fights are complex and dangerous. "I equate them to solving a 1000-mph, three-dimensional chess game where the loser dies," he says. "The radio chatter can become so confusing that it's like blaring rock music in your ears at full volume. You have to act fast, think continuously, pull upwards of 9 g's over and over, monitor your fuel state, track your weapons status, make adjustments to the jets' internal systems, avoid the ground, stay in formation with your wingmen, operate your fire-control radar, scan the airspace visually for threats, decipher your blaring radar-warning-receiver signals and ensure that you kill all the bad guys. Then you must dodge the SAMs, engage a ground target with live bombs successfully, turn around and fight your way back out through the regenerated Red Air (the pilots playing the enemy team) one more time before heading home."

I'm grateful they're up there. And I'm grateful they're on our side.