Sentry Eagle 2007

We just finished a Large Force Exercise here at Kingsley Field. It was very similar to Red Flag, which if you don't know what that is let me briefly explain. We basically created several full up air battles. Imagine an 8 ship of Eagles taking off, meeting up with the Tanker to refuel, checking in with AWACS and starting to patrol a target they're supposed to protect. Then they see some bandits on the radar and push out to intercept them, soon they figure out there are 20 hostile bandits coming in and begin to engage them which inevitably turns into mass craziness with planes swirling in individual fights from 40,000 ft to just above the ground.

It was awesome to see this happen; we had jets from all over, from Florida to Hawaii, other F-15s, F-16 Vipers, F-18 Hornets, tankers, Awacs, C-21s to act as strikers, and over 1000 support personnell and all there equipment. It was very crowded here! The exercise lasted for five days of awesome flying and five nights of great parties. I only got to fly during one fight to see what it was like, but I also went up in one of the tankers one day and took some cool pictures from the other side of the business.

I also went and qualified as an expert marksman with the M9 pistol this morning, that was cool. Maybe now those army dudes can't make fun of the "chair force."