The RCAF has never been in such a desperate state in its 100 year history. Spoke with Mike Benitez on The Merge Podcast about the Canadian fighter force at length on many issues facing the RCAF personnel.

For many of us, the road we follow is deliberate but sometimes three forces play into life’s outcomes: luck, choice, or fate. This is likely truer in aviation than in other vocations, at least if you stay long enough. And that is certainly the case with me and a near fatal event during an F-16 Radar Terrain Following test flying over the Gulf of Mexico when the jet suffered an ‘anomaly’ in the flight control system and pushed hard over when flying at 600 knots and 100 feet above the water.

Air Forces are realizing that bringing on the F-35 is not simply a fighter replacement program but the trigger to transform their entire armed forces into a 5th Gen Force.

Comprehensive Readiness for Aircrew Flying Training (CRAFT) and Optimizing the Human Weapons System (OHWS) are relatively recent programs supporting physical, physiological, and cognitive training and fitness within the US Air Force.

Allowing F-16s to be transferred to the Ukrainian Air Force, standing up training for their pilots and eventually converting them to fly the F-16 will solve an emotional appeal.  It just won’t change the course of the war.

We all love the rock star performers who can solve the unsolvable, succeed against insane odds and triumph when people think that there is no hope.  HR departments hate the people who are not like the rest of the gang and diminish or ostracize the ‘one offs’ who don’t behave like everyone else.

Lots of drama in this saga but ultimately the right jet for the right price, in the correct numbers with the jet at the right point in its development and maturity.