After reading a pretty fun article on scout.com about who would win in a mock engagement between a flight of F-15s against Russian Su-27 Flankers, it got me thinking about the fun- and the agonies- of mock engagements.
Mock engagements are extremely important in the training of fighter pilots. It just like people who go to a martial arts studio to train diligently through exercise and the memorization and practice of various moves and forms and then we get to sparring, where you put everything you learn into practice. This is where you find out just how good you really are and where you could use more work.
It goes without saying that mock engagements are a lot of fun. They are also pretty darn grueling. You’re pulling a lot of gs in air-to-air combat and taxing your physical endurance and ability to stay focused to their limits. You heart and adrenaline are pumping like crazy and you feel like this is where everything is on the line!
And when you win, it’s like no other euphoric sensation in the world! Of course, the agony if you’re beaten is just as God-awful! But that’s the thrill of the risk.
Fighter pilots don’t fear risk! We are the type of people who learn to manage risk. If you are defeated, it’s up to you to bounce back and train, train and train some more so that when the time comes for the next engagement, you just KNOW that this time you are going to WIN! It’s an inevitability, you just know it will happen!
That is the fighter pilot mentality. Making winning an inevitability that we just know will happen and making that a habit. As the great Green Bay Packers coach, Vince Lombardi was fond of saying, “Winning is not a sometime thing. Winning is an ALL THE TIME thing. You don’t win one in a while; you don’t do the right thing once in a while. You do the right thing ALL OF THE TIME. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”
If you have been trying, trying and trying again and feel like you have been defeated once or more in your quest to show yourself and others that you have what it takes to become a fighter pilot, I’ve got good news for you: it doesn’t mean that losing is your habit! On the contrary, you are making winning your habit by continuing to try, just like students getting their butts kicked by more experienced instructors in mock engagements. They experience the agony of defeat in the beginning of a post-graduate course like TOP GUN or Red Flag and their egos take some beatings…but they always come back for more! Why? Because they know that if they just learn the right information that they are being taught in their classes and implement what they have been taught in their next engagements, then it is inevitable that they will win…and they DO!
You have a winning mentality for trying. All you need is the right information to make in the cockpit of the jet of your dreams.
That’s what the Afterburner Club is for. Come join us and assure your path to victory. The will, and the decision to win, is yours!
Semper Fi!