"TOT: 30 seconds"

Do you remember the footage they would show on CNN at the start of our recent wars with the grainy green and black infrared image of a building with a set of white crosshairs on it? A few seconds after the video started there would be a huge flash which receded to show an explosion billowing up from the center of the building, then there might be a picture of once the dust had settled and there would no longer be a building there, remember? They haven’t showed footage like that in years. But like many of the things that are no longer popular or new enough to show on the news, moments like that still happen. In fact, sometimes the camera that films that destruction comes from my airplane.
Watching an explosion like that is different from the air. In your NVGs you can see far below you the multiple flashes and a huge cloud of dust which quickly rises up several hundred feet. To be honest it’s kind of a cool sight. There’s something about big explosions which people always like. I had one guy tell me it was like fireworks. Except that it’s not like fireworks. For airmen in this war it can be easy to feel a sense of detachment. There’s no real threat against us up high in the sky and with the push of a few buttons we can make some very large explosions down on the ground. Yet I’ve felt the concussion of explosions like that nearby and they are very real. We don’t just drop these weapons to make a big noise, there is a very real purpose…