Old Friends

I ran into an old friend today. We flew F-16s together years ago in Oklahoma City and he is still flying the F-16 over here doing so many different combat missions. The missions are so diverse now that the old saying "Jack of all trades, master of none" certainly applies today to the F-16. However, if you think about the pressures of a combat pilot, you really have to be in your zone or be perfect. Especially when you consider the abuse of gun camera film, and how the media, computer hackers or even Photoshop experts can manipulate the film to do harm to the actual pilot and or the mission. But these guys and gals day and night go into the mission fully aware that anything can happen to them on any given mission. It's more apparent to me as I fly this desk, that these fighter pilots must come back from a complex mission and decompress. Only now in this job I don't get to hang out with them and chair fly the flight with them so they can decompress. The other real reason they come back and just shoot the bull is so that others can learn something from the discussion but also to relax. They need to see how others act and react to the same or similiar situations. These missions always involve friendly forces and a mistake, any mistake, can kill a friendly and this usually makes the evening news. So the pressure is always on. I never knew it was so intense when I was flying the F-16. I guess you handle that pressure differently when you are actually in that part of the action. But at this point, I'm flying this desk for the better part of 15 hours a day now, and not too many people are shooting at me behind this desk. But it was good to see my buddy. It has been 11 years since I last saw him. He'll be here as long as I am so I'm looking forward to chair flying with him over a non-alcoholic Coors. Yuk! And that is that