The US Navy recently announced that its Surface Warfare Officers (SWOs) — those Sailors who operate and maintain the surface fleet of ships — will be allowed to wear a black leather jacket for “esprit de corps” and to identify with a “long lineage of professional ship drivers.”
Yet even the Navy’s official release noted the jacket’s aviator connotation: Read more
Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz and Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley have reportedly called for a new bomber to be added to the fleet. The goal would be for it to work in a variety of regimes (asymmetric to conventional to nuclear) and the aircraft would be “optionally manned.”
The Air Force currently relies on a very small number of B-2s, an ever-aging number of B-52s, and the B-1.
Several major news outlets have reported on the “leaked” video of what appears to be a US helicopter gun attack on civilians. News of the video has been distributed under the “collateral murder” moniker. Reportedly, a Reuters photographer and driver were killed, as were about a dozen others in a small group. A van subsequently comes to the scene and is also fired upon; in the van were two children who were wounded.
While not exclusively a fighter pilot topic, the video does shed some light into an area not often discussed in the public eye. There are times when Read more