on his face. ‘The ‘Viper!’, he exclaims. ‘In the
beginning it was quite overwhelming. It’s
super-fast compared to what I was used
to. It has many more systems, so you get
a little overloaded in the beginning with
all the stuff that you are learning — new
weapons, radar, systems, but it was still
great fun getting to know it. We start with
the basics, just flying the jet, making turns,
learning how to take off and land — basic
flying. You start out single-ship and then
on your third flight you go in a two-ship.
Your first solo is the fifth ride. Thereafter
the syllabus uses a stepping-stone
approach to everything. In the air-to-air
phase we start with dogfights, one jet
fighting another within visual range.
Then we progress to fighting another jet
in a two-ship set-up. From there we go
to intercepts and in the end we fight BVR
[beyond visual range], where we employ
long-range air-to-air missiles like the
AIM-120 AMRAAM. Everything is done by
a set number of flights.
‘I just finished my air-to-air syllabus and
am about to start the air-to-ground phase.
I found it really challenging — it was such
a big jump from what I had learnt so far
and the benchmark for air-to-air here is
really high. If you work extra hard and
have the right mindset, you realize you
can do it.
‘We have a lot of nice sorties going on.
We’ll be hitting the range during the
day and at night, we will be doing someThe F-16 will
continue to
serve the Royal
Netherlands Air
Force until 2025.
It’s been a solid
performer on all
levels.UNIT REPORT // DUTCH F-16 TRAINING IN THE US
76 June 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
70-78 148th FS C.indd 76 20/04/2018 09:50