Air Force jets collide in mid-air

ap ^ | 06-11-2007 | By JAMES HALPIN

[Jet Jaguar]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An F-15 fighter jet crashed Monday after colliding in mid-air with another military jet during a training exercise, Air Force officials said. The other jet landed safely, and no one was seriously injured.

The pilot of the F-15C ejected safely and was taken a military hospital, said Airman Jennifer Anton, a spokeswoman at Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks. The pilot did not have serious injuries, she said.

The pilot of the other jet, an F-16C that landed safely, was uninjured, she said.

It was not immediately clear why the two jets collided at 11:23 a.m. local time during a training exercise about 90 miles east of Fairbanks in Alaska's interior, Anton said. A board of Air Force officers will investigate.

The crash happened at the Pacific Alaska Range Complex, a 60,000-acre training ground.

The $27 million F-15C that crashed was from Langley Air Force Base, Va., and the F-16C was from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.

The Alaska Air National Guard took the F-15C pilot to Bassett Army Hospital at Fort Wainwright, also near Fairbanks, said McHugh Pierre, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

The training exercise includes more than 1,400 military members from the U.S., Singapore and Australia. The simulated combat exercise is scheduled to run through June 15, according to Eielson's Web site.

[X-FID]

Good post.

We also don't know what the training was about, very precision I'd bet.

[Search4Truth]

The collision may be attributed to Air Rage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I-vckU3lmk

[SFC Chromey]

Pull your head out, they don’t take everyone that wants to be a pilot. I am one of those. I didn’t qualify so I went 12C, then 31B.

Having these guys overhead whether its a helo or plane, tends to cease the bad guys bullets from coming in my direction. If you haven’t been in that situation, then I really don’t want to hear your bs about “what is going on with our military”.

[MediaMole]

Military pilots are top notch.

I have far more confidence flying at 300 feet in a military aircraft than I have flying at 30,000 feet in a commercial aircraft.

Our military has an amazing safety record. They fly fast, low and close, yet they have very few accidents.

[GaltMeister]

Perhaps they got too close.

Yeah, but they nearly missed. LOL

[Sir Clean Plate Club]

Tell that to the Columbia astronauts.

[Smokin' Joe]

First, we had way too many helicopter accidents; now we are colliding jets in midair?!?

It isn't civil aviation. These guys are always pushing the envelope, and they have to train much as they will fight...or the training will not be worth diddley squat.

There are going to be accidents.

I think the applicants are pretty well screened, but compare military combat flying vs. civil aviation to NASCAR vs. driving on the street, and you have a fair analogy.

NASCAR drivers are 'screened', Drive a specialized, high performance vehicle which costs multiples of the mom-and-pop version, and have more (hopefully for mom and pop) wrecks. Just part of running hard.

[Old Student]

“Maybe they should not take everyone that wants to fly a plane, and maybe we should be taking the women out of the military! The abilityy seems to have plummeted. How I wish we had the pilots that we had in the past; they seemed vastly more competent.”

I wonder if you have any concept of what it takes to be a pilot in today’s military? First, they by no means “take everyone that wants to fly a plane”. There aren’t that many pilot slots in the first place, and there are probably thousands applying for every slot - there were when I was active duty, at any rate. The Air Force is much smaller now, however, so it may even be worse than back then.

Fast reflexes, excellent vision, excellent awareness of your position in three dimensions, and dozens or even hundreds of factors, and still the only way to find out who is a good pilot is to put them in aircraft and let them fly.

We started Red Flag because our folks in ‘Nam noticed that most of our losses were among people who hadn’t survived their first ten combat missions. We fly exercises like this one in Alaska to try to get them through that first ten missions before they go into real combat — it still isn’t the same thing, but it has helped. Also, the pilots you refer to flew much slower, lower-performance aircraft than the F-15 and F-16. There is less margin for competence there. The pilots of the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s would be lost in the newer jets.

And those aren’t the most modern birds in the air, either. I first worked on F-16’s and F-15’s in the late 70’s or early 80’s, those birds were designed in the late 60’s or early 70’s.

My favorite aircraft was the F-4D, but those are hopelessly outclassed by the newer jets. Once the pilots get trained up, the new birds will own the skys.

I once had a pilot from the Illinois ANG bring a strip of gun camera film into my lab and ask for a print from any one frame of the strip; he had an F-15 under the reticle for 7 seconds. That is FOREVER in a dogfight. He was flying an F-100. Major, 4000 hours in the airframe, 2 tours in ‘Nam. Against a 1st Lt. What do you want to bet that LT is a MUCH better pilot now, if he lived?

[Old Student]

“I got a news flash for ya ace, it happens all the time. Military aviation is a dangerous and challenging occupation even in peace time. I spent 3years as an AF flight surgeon and was involved in 4 separate accident investigations.”

I started out as an aircraft mechanic, and retrained into still photo when I wrecked my knees. In the ten years I was a photographer, I was involved in something over 100 aircraft accidents. Most of them at Nellis. A lot of dead guys, several of them friends of mine. You are so right! Lot of people have absolutely no idea...

[LIConFem]

Thank God both pilots are okay. That's all that really matters.

"It was not immediately clear why the two jets collided at 11:23 a.m. local time during a training exercise..."

I suspect it had something to do with to bodies attempting to occupy the same space at the same time.

[EDINVA]

thank God for those jet-pilot-quick reflexes

[Loud Mime]

it's the sudden stop at the end of the fall, every time.

We called it "HIGH SPEED DIRT"

[Old Student]

“The collision may be attributed to Air Rage.”

Not particularly funny, FRiend.

[Robert A Cook PE]

“In our 1996 review,\2 we reported that DOD aviation safety had
improved significantly over the previous two decades. Between fiscal
year 1975 and 1995, for example, the annual number of Class A mishaps
decreased from 309 to 76, while the number of fatalities decreased
from 285 to 85. During this period, Class A mishaps per 100,000
flying hours, referred to as the mishap rate, also decreased from
about 4.3 to 1.5. The value of Class A losses during the early 1990s
ranged from a high of about $1.6 billion in fiscal year 1993 to a low
of $1.2 billion in fiscal year 1994.”

Notice that the flight accident rate was HIGHEST under the Carter period of low budgets, poor repair, low number of missions flown.

Under the Reagan-Bush I era of (marginally) adequate budgets and greater flight time, flight accidents go DOWN.

[CholeraJoe]

Anna is so last year. Maria Sharapova is just as beautiful and a much better tennis player.

[RightWhale]

60,000-acre training ground

That's only three townships or less, which is nothing for jet fighters. Our local news says the collision was north of Fairbanks, but our sense of direction is as poor of our sense of time since the sun is either missing most of the day or goes around and around hardly ever setting.

[RightWhale]

One of the helicopters was forced to land near my place a couple weeks ago due to some indicator firing off for no apparent reason.

[theFIRMbss]

>Anna is so last year. Maria Sharapova is just as beautiful and a much better tennis player

Anna was never
booed. More and more, Maria
is doing things and

saying things that make
tennis fans upset with her.
Her fifteen are up.

---------------------------------------------------------------

...the Russian was also forced to face the wrath of the Roland Garros crowd after a disputed point in the deciding set. As Sharapova started her service motion at 7-7, 30-love, Schnyder tried to call time. Sharapova went ahead and hit - she said she saw Schnyder's hand after finishing the serve - and when Schnyder let the ball go by, Sharapova had her first ace of the tournament. 'I only saw her hand up when I finished the serve,' Sharapova said. Sharapova, who remained imperturbable while Schnyder was arguing with the umpire, was booed by the crowd. From that moment on, fans jeered and whistled derisively at Sharapova, including when she would pump a fist after winning a point, when she went to the change rackets in the middle of a game, and when the match ended. 'It's pretty hard being a tennis player and Mother Teresa at the same time,' said Sharapova, who pumped her fist and screamed encouragement to herself throughout the third set. THROUGH BUT BOOED

[Jet Jaguar]

When I lived there, I had some trouble with that is well. I figured out during January, the sun would come up and set over a mountain peak beyond Salcha. Once I had that peak targeted, I could figure rough direction.

[RightWhale]

It is amusing to a cartographer to hear both North Pole and Nenana referred to as south of Fairbanks.