US Air Force,
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE: Every day, F-15 Eagle instructor pilots here teach dozens of student pilots how to fight and win in combat. But the instructors rarely get a chance to showcase their own warfighting skills.
Fortunately, some 1st Fighter Squadron instructors got a chance to test their skills against the toughest and best trained “adversary” there is — other Air Force fighter pilots.
The event pitted a dozen Eagles and — for the first time — two F/A-22 Raptors from the 43rd FS here, against F-16 Fighting Falcons and a QF-4 Phantom II in a mock aerial engagement dubbed “War Day.”
Lt. Col. Bert Dreher, the Eagle squadron commander, said War Day is meant to not only keep instructors' skills sharp, but also to remind them and the students they teach that their objective is to fight and win the nation's wars.
“We often get locked into the training mindset and forget that, at the heart of all of this, we are warriors,” he said. “(Instructors) are here to pass on the skills we've learned, but as warriors out there, we have the potential of getting shot at.
