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Hey guys,
Found this on another site. Great read.
'It's an admirable ambition and one of many rewarding careers available in the military...but it's not for everybody. Although we may all be members of the Air Force and sworn to defend our country, let's not kid ourselves. Very few of us actually train or commit our careers to engaging the enemy and prosecuting violence. This isn't to say fighter pilots are more important than any other part of the Air Force teamâ â€they're not. It's just that their position at the tip of the sword makes them unique.
So you want to be a fighter pilot? All you have to do is graduate from a four-year college or university, garner a commission in the Air Force, and excel in two years of intense and competitive flight training, When you've done all this, you may like to call yourself a fighter pilot, but in reality you won't be able to fly and chew gum at the same time. In fact, you'll be almost as dangerous to yourself and your unit as you will be to the enemy. In two more years though, you'll undergo a metamorphosis from squadron liability to squadron asset, and grow into a fledgling flight lead. In two more years, you'll think you're the best gunfighter and aviator that ever patrolled the boundless dimensions of earth, and be ready to upgrade to instructor pilot. The circle will close as you mold embryonic fighter pilots to be just like yourself. In the process, you'll experience one of the most demanding, exciting, taxing, and competitive professions imaginable.
Modern aerial combat has become an extremely stressful environment that demands robust physical conditioning, deft mental gymnastics, and precise hand-eye coordination. A fighter pilot is a three dimensional racecar driver, computer programmer, navigator, bombardier, radio operator, flight engineer, nose gunner, weight lifter, warrior, and chess player all in one. At 9 Gs, a pilot's 10-pound head weighs 90 pounds. Next time you're at the gym, hang an extra 80 pounds on your neck, tilt back, and try checking-out your backside. Now imagine doing it in an aircraft as your brain attempts to keep-up with the earth and sky as they both tumble around your universe. As tough as the physical demands are, a fighter pilot's real challenge is in the employment of their weapon system. With aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound and missiles traveling at six times that speed, the difference between kill and be killed can be mere seconds, or the difference between a perfect and nearly perfect decision.
During a major inspection such as an Operational Readiness Inspection, all pilots in a wing are tested on the first day. For fighter pilots this is taken one step further. Not only are they tested on their own aircraft and procedures, but they're tested on the enemy's too. Think you're a professional on top of your career? Imagine having to prove it during testing administered by headquarters. Then try-on a no-notice checkride. Pressure? No way.
Pressure is getting shot at. No-notice testing and checkrides are merely irritants.
Thrills are what most people get out of a roller coaster ride. Excitement is passing beak-to-beak at over 1,200 miles per hour. Excitement is sneaking-up on the enemy while contour flying the earth. Excitement is rolling on your back in the middle of the night to hurl your jet at a bandit skimming across the waves. Excitement is trying to decide between the gun and a Maverick shot. Excitement is betting your missile will time-out before the bandit's missile times-out on you.
After the first 1,000 flight briefings, number 1,001 sounds pretty familiar. After straining against the limits of physiological endurance, hours spent in a combat-air-patrol can be hypnotically repetitive. But all you have to do is put the afterburners into the northwest quadrant once, look back, and watch the world get smaller to realize whatever pain there is in being a fighter pilot is worth it. If the price of admission is periodic testing, thorough flight briefings, and periodic combat-air-patrols...sign me up! It's still a bargain.
Professional development is important to all officers, but particularly important to fighter pilots. Not because being "professional" is an end to itself, but because professional development is a means of increasing our lethality. Officers are judged by many scales, but let there be no doubt what the most important scale is for a fighter pilot ...the ability to successfully employ their weapon system. There are a lot of things that go through an adversary's mind at the merge. Whether or not you've completed Squadron Officer School is probably not one of them. But if SOS helped you plan, coordinate, brief, or lead your formation to a position of advantage at the merge, then your adversary just made a fatal mistake.
If forced to sum-up the life of a fighter pilot in a single word, â Å“competitionâ ? would be an excellent choice. Out of approximately 363,000 military members in the Air Force, less than 72,000 are officers. Out of these 72,000, less than 13,200 are pilots. From these 13,200, only 4,291 are fighter pilots. Comprising less than 1.2 percent of the entire Air Force, the competition that goes into becoming part of this elite group is fierce. What's more, it never stops. In every fighter squadron there is an unofficial hierarchy of pilots, much like a racquetball ladder. Each day, number ten tries to move up a notch while number one tries to stay on top. The debriefs are brutal and always come down to the same thing. Either you succeeded or failed; won or lost; lived or died. As a boy, I always dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. It wasn't until I became a fighter pilot that I realized the sense of esprit de corps and competition found in professional sports is endemic to fighter pilots.'"
Found this on another site. Great read.
'It's an admirable ambition and one of many rewarding careers available in the military...but it's not for everybody. Although we may all be members of the Air Force and sworn to defend our country, let's not kid ourselves. Very few of us actually train or commit our careers to engaging the enemy and prosecuting violence. This isn't to say fighter pilots are more important than any other part of the Air Force teamâ â€they're not. It's just that their position at the tip of the sword makes them unique.
So you want to be a fighter pilot? All you have to do is graduate from a four-year college or university, garner a commission in the Air Force, and excel in two years of intense and competitive flight training, When you've done all this, you may like to call yourself a fighter pilot, but in reality you won't be able to fly and chew gum at the same time. In fact, you'll be almost as dangerous to yourself and your unit as you will be to the enemy. In two more years though, you'll undergo a metamorphosis from squadron liability to squadron asset, and grow into a fledgling flight lead. In two more years, you'll think you're the best gunfighter and aviator that ever patrolled the boundless dimensions of earth, and be ready to upgrade to instructor pilot. The circle will close as you mold embryonic fighter pilots to be just like yourself. In the process, you'll experience one of the most demanding, exciting, taxing, and competitive professions imaginable.
Modern aerial combat has become an extremely stressful environment that demands robust physical conditioning, deft mental gymnastics, and precise hand-eye coordination. A fighter pilot is a three dimensional racecar driver, computer programmer, navigator, bombardier, radio operator, flight engineer, nose gunner, weight lifter, warrior, and chess player all in one. At 9 Gs, a pilot's 10-pound head weighs 90 pounds. Next time you're at the gym, hang an extra 80 pounds on your neck, tilt back, and try checking-out your backside. Now imagine doing it in an aircraft as your brain attempts to keep-up with the earth and sky as they both tumble around your universe. As tough as the physical demands are, a fighter pilot's real challenge is in the employment of their weapon system. With aircraft traveling faster than the speed of sound and missiles traveling at six times that speed, the difference between kill and be killed can be mere seconds, or the difference between a perfect and nearly perfect decision.
During a major inspection such as an Operational Readiness Inspection, all pilots in a wing are tested on the first day. For fighter pilots this is taken one step further. Not only are they tested on their own aircraft and procedures, but they're tested on the enemy's too. Think you're a professional on top of your career? Imagine having to prove it during testing administered by headquarters. Then try-on a no-notice checkride. Pressure? No way.
Pressure is getting shot at. No-notice testing and checkrides are merely irritants.
Thrills are what most people get out of a roller coaster ride. Excitement is passing beak-to-beak at over 1,200 miles per hour. Excitement is sneaking-up on the enemy while contour flying the earth. Excitement is rolling on your back in the middle of the night to hurl your jet at a bandit skimming across the waves. Excitement is trying to decide between the gun and a Maverick shot. Excitement is betting your missile will time-out before the bandit's missile times-out on you.
After the first 1,000 flight briefings, number 1,001 sounds pretty familiar. After straining against the limits of physiological endurance, hours spent in a combat-air-patrol can be hypnotically repetitive. But all you have to do is put the afterburners into the northwest quadrant once, look back, and watch the world get smaller to realize whatever pain there is in being a fighter pilot is worth it. If the price of admission is periodic testing, thorough flight briefings, and periodic combat-air-patrols...sign me up! It's still a bargain.
Professional development is important to all officers, but particularly important to fighter pilots. Not because being "professional" is an end to itself, but because professional development is a means of increasing our lethality. Officers are judged by many scales, but let there be no doubt what the most important scale is for a fighter pilot ...the ability to successfully employ their weapon system. There are a lot of things that go through an adversary's mind at the merge. Whether or not you've completed Squadron Officer School is probably not one of them. But if SOS helped you plan, coordinate, brief, or lead your formation to a position of advantage at the merge, then your adversary just made a fatal mistake.
If forced to sum-up the life of a fighter pilot in a single word, â Å“competitionâ ? would be an excellent choice. Out of approximately 363,000 military members in the Air Force, less than 72,000 are officers. Out of these 72,000, less than 13,200 are pilots. From these 13,200, only 4,291 are fighter pilots. Comprising less than 1.2 percent of the entire Air Force, the competition that goes into becoming part of this elite group is fierce. What's more, it never stops. In every fighter squadron there is an unofficial hierarchy of pilots, much like a racquetball ladder. Each day, number ten tries to move up a notch while number one tries to stay on top. The debriefs are brutal and always come down to the same thing. Either you succeeded or failed; won or lost; lived or died. As a boy, I always dreamed of becoming a professional athlete. It wasn't until I became a fighter pilot that I realized the sense of esprit de corps and competition found in professional sports is endemic to fighter pilots.'"
And 4,000 plus fighter pilots ??? Ahh just kidding of course. Good read tho, for what I am assuming is dealing with the American Air Force. With such a smaller force I'm guessing Canada's Air Force would be even that much more competitive?
