I just got home from a 1-month trip to the U.S. for some pre-deployment training. The trip was fantastic. I got to fly an F-16 across the Atlantic (twice), fly low over the desert, drop lots of bombs, and interact with the dudes on the ground who we'll be supporting when we go downrange.
Curt, my crew chief for this flight, poses in front of three 500 lb inert bombs I dropped on this sortie. In our month of training, our squadron dropped over 300,000 lbs of munitions.
With so many Californians that see this site, I hesitate to mention the destruction the 202 bomblets released from this weapon can cause. I dropped it in the middle of the desert and it made a huge blanket of fireworks on the sand.
The laser-guided GBU-12 goes where I point the laser. Smart little fella.
Illumination rockets. These things are cool cuz they light up a huge area on the ground as they parachute to the earth, but the effects can only be seen when wearing night vision goggles (NVG). With the naked eye it just looks dark, but put on the NVGs and there's enough light to illuminate a landing zone for a helicopter.
Hoodlums
No comments:
Post a Comment