Thursday, March 16, 2023

Nice Tight Formation

 


7 comments:

  1. Fly fly fly my beauties....Off to Ukraine

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    Replies
    1. Not with an empty outer rail. Load up and move out.

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  2. I had to look it up. These are aggressor planes used for pilot training. I don't remember seeing these in "Top Gun."

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  3. The NAWOC marking on the port ventral fin leads us to
    https://www.f-16.net/units_article139.html

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  4. Neighbor flys now commands unit. Claims the D model is always broken but said if I become mayor of my local town he can take me up. Said no thanks, politician is the last descriptive word I would allow to be used with my name.

    Bear Claw

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  5. I don’t know about this particular of 16, but the Navy has acquired F-16s In three different time periods.

    Back in the 80s they bought F-16N models, specially configured for the Navy based on the F-16 A and B models, which were used for Top Gun adversary training. They were retired in the 1990s.

    Then about year 2000 the Navy acquired some F 16 C/D models that Pakistan had purchased but were subsequently embargoed from receiving, and they were just sitting around. Again they were and still are used at the Topgun school at Fallon as adversary trainers.

    More recently, like in the last couple of years, the Navy is acquiring retired Air Force F-16 C&D models to replace legacy Hornets being used in the land-based naval reserve squadrons that provide adversary training. The Navy appears to want to offload the legacy Hornets as soon as possible, but they don’t have enough F/A18 E/F models to equip the reserve squadrons yet. I think as they ramp up on the F-35C then Super Hornets will come available for the reserve squadrons, but until then reserve adversary trainers will be flying F-16s is an F-5s.

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