Combat aircraft

 y at the same time. You’re processing all

this information that is being given to you,

while you’re still listening to a controller,

talking or listening to your  ight lead,

giving you instructions as you’re breaking

with 9g, and you’re still looking at your

radar and your HUD [head-up display]

and your missile and all the information

that is being presented to you and still

be e ective as a  ghter pilot. So there’s

stu that you cannot necessarily predict

until we get to those certain phases. This

proved too much for him physically and

unfortunately we had to let him go. He’s

going to get another glorious career on

the C-130, which is another great tactical

platform, just with less g.

‘Obviously, most attrition occurs before

they even get to us. I believe there is a

certain skill set involved but, yeah, if I have

a period of years to devote to a student

then I can probably get him to a certain

level of  ying the F-16, but he needs to

able to do it in nine months. They need

to be limited combat-ready, pretty much

ready to deploy in nine months, and if he

can’t get there in nine months then this is

not their job.’

Lt Martijn was the  rst RNLAF pilot

to complete his initial training with the

Italian Air Force. ‘I don’t think there is a

lot of competition’, he says. ‘You just want

to be the best for yourself. We try to do

as much as possible together, including

the social side. On the operational side,

we will discuss the things we learned; try

to share the lessons learned, because if I

 y a new sortie today and my colleague

is  ying the same one tomorrow then it’s

good for him to hear what I did wrong

so he can improve before the  ight and

won’t have to make the same mistake

as I made.’

‘We are a team, we’re all going to

cross the same border at the same time,’

adds ‘Niki’. ‘In the 1980s everybody

wanted to be the best and not share

their knowledge. Luckily those days

are gone. It’s not very professional and

it’s not bene cial to anybody. I want to

make everyone better than I am right

now and better than I ever will be. Then

everybody wins.’

All in a day’s work

‘On a typical  ying day’, Martijn describes,

‘the squadron will  y two waves — the

 rst will be students and the second will

be the ops guys. Depending on where

you are in the syllabus, we will usually

 nd ourselves  ying three times a week.

The planning usually starts the day

before, according to the syllabus you will

be executing. We will then arrive at the

squadron around 06.00hrs, grab a co ee,

check the weather and the NOTAMS

[notices to airmen] and any other special

items like the emergency of the day, and

then you go into the brie ng with the

instructor.

‘The brie ng will usually take little over

an hour and we discuss everything from

how we depart, how we come back and

what we will do in the air. We make sure

we cover every objective of the mission.

For example, this week we began to learn

air-to-ground, so we talked in extreme

detail about what to do when and focused

a lot on the switchology.’

Speaking to Combat Aircraft, Martijn is

fresh from a ‘turning and burning’ air-to-air

mission, red mask indentations evident

Above: The Dutch

team at the

148th includes

instructor pilots,

mission planners

and a simulator

instructor.

Below: A Litening

pod-toting F-16BM

punches out

heat-seeking

missile decoy

fl ares.

http://www.combataircraft.net // June 2018 75

70-78 148th FS C.indd 75 20/04/2018 09:50