{"id":3682,"date":"2010-02-09T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T08:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=3682"},"modified":"2010-02-08T22:39:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T06:39:08","slug":"fighter-pilot-reaches-4000-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/09\/fighter-pilot-reaches-4000-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighter Pilot Reaches 4000 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Air Force article reports that LtCol Gary Middlebrooks has achieved 4,000 flight hours in the F-16<\/a> while deployed to Iraq.\u00a0 Lockheed Martin, the contractor for the F-16, tracks such milestones and says that only 32 other pilots in the world<\/em> have flown that many hours in the F-16.\u00a0 (F-16.net also tracks Viper pilot hours<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

“Flight hours” are a fairly routine measure of a fighter pilot’s time in his aircraft.\u00a0 While they do not directly correlate with maturity or experience, they do let everyone know how long a pilot has been associated with his airframe.\u00a0 Part of the rarity of such a number of hours is due to the short sortie duration of most fighter flights, and also the fact that fighter pilots are generally required to complete multi-year non-flying assignments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Often, though not always, fighter pilots with such high hours are reservists or national\u00a0guard members.\u00a0 For example, Col Robert McCutchen<\/a>, who is also mentioned in the article and has\u00a04,900 hours in the F-16, has been a reserve F-16 training instructor\u00a0for 10 years<\/em>, providing him a unique opportunity to fly–continuously–far longer than most active duty fighter pilots.<\/p>\n

Often, though not always,\u00a0those pilots have also been on multiple combat deployments in those guard\/reserve roles.\u00a0\u00a0In general,\u00a0active duty pilots may go on one or two deployments at one assignment; they then move to another assignment.\u00a0 In today’s Air Force, it is unlikely that the second assignment will even be in the F-16, never mind an F-16 unit that deploys to combat.\u00a0 Reserve and guard pilots, however, may deploy one or more times a year for years in a row.\u00a0 The reason this distinction has an impact is that combat fighter missions are often significantly longer than training ones (often\u00a04 to 8 hours or more, as opposed to 1 to 2 in training), meaning some pilots can log more flight time in combat in a month<\/em> than they normally do in a year<\/em> in training.<\/p>\n

Regardless, 4,000 hours is an achievement, and it is one that few reach.\u00a0 It’s also almost the equivalent of an entire year sitting in a very small, cramped cockpit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Air Force article reports that LtCol Gary Middlebrooks has achieved 4,000 flight hours in the F-16 while deployed to Iraq.\u00a0 Lockheed Martin, the contractor for the F-16, tracks such milestones and says that only 32 other pilots in the world have flown that many hours in the F-16.\u00a0 (F-16.net also tracks Viper pilot hours.) “Flight hours” are a fairly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[13,186,187,184,52,2,183,188,185],"class_list":["post-3682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-aircraft","tag-f-16","tag-gary-middlebrooks","tag-guard","tag-iraq","tag-military","tag-reserve","tag-robert-mccutchen","tag-viper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3682\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}