Becoming a fighter pilot is a dream for many. Military flying has been around since the world wars, but as technology advanced—and media representation in movies such as Top Gun increased—the general public’s fascination with military pilots, especially fighter pilots, has only increased.

One of the most popular questions many have is how to become a military pilot in the first place. It is possible to become a pilot in nearly every branch: the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines, Coast Guard, and National Guard. Each branch completes its own training, but there are common requirements that apply across the board to help applicants start their careers.

Most notably, a four-year degree is usually required to have a chance at becoming a military or fighter pilot. Some applicants complete this prerequisite by attending a university run by a military branch, such as the U.S. Military , Air Force, Naval, or Coast Guard academies. Still, others attend a traditional civilian university and complete additional requirements on campus.

In addition, pilot hopefuls must be officers. Besides attending one of the four military academies, applicants can complete training at the Officer Training School or, especially notable if they attend a four-year university, ROTC. ROTC programs for all branches exist at numerous universities across the country, providing access to practically any interested pilot.

Pilots must also meet a variety of physical criteria and fitness tests. The Air Force stipulates that height requirements vary based on the aircraft a pilot will operate, but fitness is still of paramount importance. Uncorrected 20/20 vision, or better, is critical, as is good heart health and acceptable hearing. Pilots must also be in good mental health so they can remain calm and focused even in the most stressful situations.

Finally, there are many demographic criteria that a prospective candidate must meet. Pilots need to be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident at least 18 years old. Maximum ages vary by branch but are generally in the mid-30s.

All these requirements must be met before a pilot even gets in an aircraft. After becoming eligible, a pilot must complete a ground school course on aerodynamics, aircraft systems, and more. The military uses a series of basic trainer aircraft, many based on civilian aircraft models, to start their pilots’ training before moving them to advanced aircraft and, finally, the pilot’s permanent type.

Military pilots have a variety of roles and responsibilities. From refueling other aircraft and searching for threatening targets to providing aerial support to ground troops and even dogfighting, pilots are expected to carry out each mission with professionalism, expertise, and skill.

After settling into their new job, pilots have opportunities to be promoted or change types. These moves can often be competitive, and new positions are based on performance. However, military pilots are nothing if not motivated to meet each new challenge and opportunity head-on.

The post How to Become a Military Pilot appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Bong, born in Superior, Wisconsin, shot down 40 Japanese aircraft during WWII.

The aircraft, christened Marge after Majorie “Marge” Ann Vattendahl, Bong’s girlfriend and later wife, is adorned with an image of her drawn from a yearbook portrait. At the time, most nose art featured scantily clad women or two-fisted aggressive cartoon characters, but Bong wanted something different.

The wreckage was found in a forest in what is now Papua New Guinea. It crashed there in March 1944 when another pilot, Second Lieutenant Thomas Malone, was flying a reconnaissance mission at night in challenging weather and experienced engine failure. Malone bailed out, evaded capture, and lived to fly another day.

• READ MORE: Downed WWII Lancaster Bomber Raised from Sea Floor

According to Pacific Wrecks Director Justin Taylan, the search team found the wreckage May 15 in Papua New Guinea’s Madang Province. Eighty years is a long time, especially when an aircraft goes down in a dynamic environment like the jungle. It takes a great deal of time to do the research, sifting through battle reports and old weather reports to find the approximate location of a crash, then traveling to the remote areas, which often can only be reached on foot because of the thick vegetation. Nothing is done quickly.

According to Taylan, the narrative of the aircraft’s loss suggested it had crashed on the grounds of a plantation.

“We have been planning this mission since October 2023 and every year conduct expeditions to locate historical sites or document crash sites,” Taylan told FLYING. “Our work is supported by donations from the public. The P-38 Marge project is in partnership with the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center, that funded half of the costs. Pacific Wrecks is a charity, and our team members are volunteers.”

When the team arrived on site, locals took them to a crash site, and it turned out to be a Japanese aircraft. The team was then told about another wreck located deeper in the jungle. The team set out again, and eventually found the wreckage in a ravine. Pieces of metal were found scattered on and in the ground and at the top of the ridge they found two aircraft engines embedded in the soil, indicating the aircraft went nose-first.

In a media conference, Taylan stated that when they found the wingtips with red paint on them, they were encouraged, as Bong’s aircraft was marked in this fashion, but added that they would have to find something imprinted with the aircraft’s serial number of 42-103993 to positively identify the aircraft.

Taylan supplied photos of  a wing tip that is embossed with what appears to be “993″. Another image shows a piece of metal stamped with “Model P-38 JK.”

During a video news conference from Papua New Guinea, Taylan said that the serial number and model identification prove the plane is the one they’ve been looking for. 

“I think it’s safe to say mission accomplished,” Taylan said. “Marge has been identified. It’s a great day for the center, a great day for Pacific Wrecks, a great day for history.”

During WWII, Bong was America’s top ace, shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft, three of them from the cockpit of Marge. In 1944 Gen. Douglas MacArthur awarded Bong the Medal of Honor.

Bong and Vattendahl married in 1945. Having completed three combat tours in the South Pacific, Bong was brought back to the U.S. and promoted the sale of war bonds when he was reassigned to test pilot duty in Burbank, California.

On August 6, 1945 while flying the new P-80A Shooting Star, one of America’s first jet airplanes, he ran into trouble. The aircraft took off around 2:30 p.m. and according to the accident investigation there was a problem with the aircraft’s fuel pump. Bong attempted to eject but his parachute did not deploy, and both the pilot and airplane went down in a field north of Hollywood. Bong was killed on the same day that America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The next day in some newspapers the story about his death was given higher placement than the dropping of the bomb.

According to Pacific Wrecks, the Bong family was excited to hear about the discovery of the aircraft. Bong is still celebrated in Wisconsin. There is a bridge, an airport and a state recreation area named for him.

Tribute P-38s

There are two replicas of Marge in Wisconsin. One is at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh, the other in the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center in Superior.

According to Briana Fiandt, curator of collections and exhibits at the center, the P-38 they have on display was used stateside during World War II.

“In 1949 it was given to the town of Poplar, where Bong grew up, and put up on a pedestal in front of a school in 1955. In the early 1990s, it was taken down and sent to the 148th airbase in Duluth for restoration,” she said.

While all that was happening, funds were being raised to build a museum to honor Bong and others who served in WWII, as well as house the aircraft. The museum is located on the Bay of Lake Superior.

“The museum was built around the airplane,” says Fiandt. “We had it installed and the museum opened, then we built the other half of the museum.”

• READ MORE: Inside the ‘Spruce Goose’

Today the multi-story facility also honors the homefront during WWII, as well as the Korean  and Vietnam conflicts. There are more than 17,000 artifacts in the museum collection.

Fiandt said that the team in Papua New Guinea has sent photographs and videos of the Marge recovery site which are being added to the collection. Fiandt is not sure what will happen to the actual aircraft, but said she has reached out to the national museum in New Guinea which may take ownership of the wreckage.

Marge is also one of the most famous mass produced P-38 aircraft model kits. If you have ever built a model of a P-38, it is very likely you built Major Bong’s aircraft, which includes red spinners, wingtips and tail stubs and what looks like a photograph on the nose.

The post U.S. WWII Ace Richard Bong’s P-38 Believed Found appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The stealth strike bomber was unveiled in December 2022 and officially moved into low-rate production earlier this year. In January, Northrop Grumman said six B-21 bombers are in various stages of final assembly and testing at its facility in Palmdale, California.

On Wednesday, the Air Force released a new image of the aircraft it calls the “backbone of the  U.S. Air Force bomber fleet.”

Northrop Grumman on Thursday released an additional image of the bomber in flight, saying the test campaign at Edwards AFB was led by a Combined Test Force (CTF) composed of personnel representing the Air Force and the manufacturer.

“CTF test pilots indicate the jet is performing as expected with the aircraft flying like the simulator, reflecting the precision of the digital environment on B-21,” Northrop Grumman said in a statement.

• READ MORE: Pentagon Greenlights B-21 Production

Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, addressed the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month on the B-21’s progress.

“We are in the flight test program, [and] the flight test program is proceeding well,” said Hunter. “It is doing what flight test programs are designed to do, which is helping us learn about the unique characteristics of this platform, but in a very effective way.” 

Designed to carry out long-range conventional and nuclear missions, the B-21 is set to eventually replace aging B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit fleets. The B-21 is scheduled to hit full operational status in the mid-2020s.

• READ MORE: B-21 Raider Takes First Flight

The Air Force has said it intends to purchase at least 100 of the aircraft. Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, has been designated as the first main operating facility for the B-21 and its formal training unit. 

The post B-21 Flight Testing, Production ‘Continues to Make Progress,’ Air Force Says appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

On April 30, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded Aurora a $25 million contract modification to continue working on its version of the Speed and Runway Independent Technologies (SPRINT) entry, a notable boost from the previous $4.2 million award.

• READ MORE: Aurora Flight Sciences Revises Liberty Lifter Design

Also referred to as the X-Plane, the program is looking for a candidate that can fly at speeds of 400 to 450 knots (far exceeding the 270-knot maximum speed of the V-22 Osprey) and be able to hover “in a stable manner” and transition from hover to forward flight. The X-Plane will also “feature a distributed energy system that effectively powers all the propulsion technology during that transition,” according to Defense News.

Three other contenders are in the X-Plane hunt: Bell Textron, Northrop Grumman and Piasecki Aircraft. But Aurora, a Boeing subsidiary, is the only competitor to receive upgraded funding.

• READ MORE: DARPA Achieves Major Breakthrough with AI-Controlled Aircraft

The new conceptual art released Monday shows an uncrewed aircraft (in contrast with previous concepts that showed cockpit windows) with a composite exterior. Aurora said it could add more fan-in-wing lift fans to the design should Pentagon requirements change in the future. It could also reinstate the crewed aircraft configuration.

Aurora concluded that its SPRINT/X-Plane design team projects finishing the preliminary design review of its entry in about a year, with the goal of first flight within three years.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post Aurora Notches More DARPA Funding for Its X-Plane Contender appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Since 2020, the U.S. Air Force has had a program called Agility Prime to look at electric aviation’s potential uses, but now legislators want the effort to be ramped up. As part of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, the bill would “set up a working group made up of top-ranking defense officials” to kick-start Agility Prime, and it’s throwing some major brass at it.

The new committee, if approved, would be run by the Secretary of the Air Force and would include the Army and Navy secretaries and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Air Force Secretary would have to submit a first report by September 2025 and annually until 2027.

The Air Force already has contracts with several companies developing eVTOLs, including Beta Technologies, which delivered a test article of its Alia aircraft to Florida’s Eglin Air Force Base, where it did its first test flight in November.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post Legislators Want Military to Speed Up Electric Aircraft Integration appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The single-seat F-16 assigned to the 49th Wing based at Holloman AFB went down around 11:50 a.m. MDT, according to the Air Force.

The crash occurred near White Sands National Park about 7 miles from the base, near the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range.

According to a report in Air Force Times, Holloman is a training hub for F-16 pilots, graduating an average of 180 candidates per year. Tuesday’s crash marks the fourth involving Air Force F-16s within the past 12 months, with the other three occurring in South Korea.

The news source cited an average of three F-16 losses per year over the past 10 years. The service operates 841 Fighting Falcons, with plans to reduce that to 830 during fiscal year 2025, according to the report.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post Pilot Safely Ejects From F-16 Crash in New Mexico appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The aircraft is owned by the Coulson Group in Port Alberni, British Columbia, and spent decades fighting wildfires up and down the west coast of North America. An earlier deal to send the aircraft to the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida, fell through but the airplane was painted in navy blue in anticipation of that move.

“We are pleased to have the Philippine Mars join our museum where we will preserve this World War II-era aircraft for decades to come,” said Scott Marchand, CEO of Pima Air and Space Museum.

• READ MORE: Inside the ‘Spruce Goose’

A sister ship, Hawaii Mars, which fought fires up until 2015, will be sent to the B.C. Aviation Museum in Sidney, B.C., near Victoria.

“As a fitting tribute to their years of service and years of hard work by many people in B.C. and the U.S., we are pleased to see both Mars aircraft landing to rest at world class institutions in 2024,” said Coulson Group CEO Wayne Coulson.

What’s not clear is how the massive flying boat will get to Tucson. It has no landing gear and operates only from water. It needs a relatively big body of water to take off and land, and there is no such open water in the immediate area of the museum.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared on AVweb.

The post WWII-Era ‘Philippine Mars’ Transport Seaplane Headed to Arizona Museum appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The aircraft will replace the T-44C Pegasus, an earlier version of a militarized King Air that has been in use since 1977. The T-44C is slated to be phased out over the next year.

• READ MORE: Navy to Explore Use of eSTOL Aircraft, Issues Contract to Electra

Last week the T-54As were flown from the factory in Wichita, Kansas, to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas, where they will be used by Naval Air Training Command. They will be used to train the next generation of naval aviators who may go on to fly the P-8A Poseidon, E-2D Hawkeye and C-130 Hercules.

The Navy placed an order for the aircraft made by Textron Aviation in January 2023 as part of a 2023 METS contract. 

• READ MORE: U.S. Navy Awards Contract for Long-Range, Solar-Powered Stealth Drone

“The new METS aircraft will give us the ability to train pilots across the services with an advanced platform that better represents fleet aircraft,” Captain Holly Shoger, program manager of the Naval Undergraduate Flight Training Systems Program Office, said at the time. “The T-54A will include the latest avionics and navigational updates, such as virtual reality and augmented reality devices, to ensure pilots are ready to face any challenges that come their way in tomorrow’s battlespace.” 

The T-54A is a pressurized turboprop with state-of-the-art avionics, including multifunction displays with a digital moving map, an integrated GPS/inertial navigation system, ADS-B, a flight management system, weather radar, radar altimeter, and a cockpit data recorder. 

• READ MORE: U.S. Navy Signs Deal with Boeing for 17 F/A-18 Super Hornets

The T-54 is expected to meet advanced multi-engine and advanced tilt-rotor training requirements for the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps through 2055.

According to NAVAIR, the T-54A will “provide advanced instrument and asymmetric engine handling training to student naval aviators selected for multi-engine fleet communities.”

Last year’s agreement initially ordered 10 King Air 260s and associated support. Deliveries for the first aircraft are scheduled between 2024 and 2026. Per the contract, the Navy may take delivery of up to 64 of the trainers.

The post Navy Modernizes Training Fleet with T-54A Delivery appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

The company on Tuesday said it completed a crewed, full transition flight of its Alia-250 (A250) eVTOL, shifting from vertical lift to forward cruise on fixed wings during the same flight. The model is one of two aircraft the firm is looking to commercialize in the coming years, along with a conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) Alia variant. Over four years of flight testing, Beta says its aircraft together have now logged more than 40,000 nautical miles.

Beta competitor Joby Aviation has also completed a crewed transition flight, putting a U.S. Air Force pilot at the helm in 2023. It claims to be the first to achieve the milestone. However, Beta’s flight is believed to be the first to include an out and back. Another competitor, Archer Aviation, said in January it is progressing toward a full wing-borne transition flight after it completed the first phase of its own flight campaign with the Air Force.

Like all of Beta’s test flights to date, the transition flight at the company’s flight test facility in Plattsburgh, New York, was crewed. Alia was piloted by Nate Moyer, a former Air Force experimental test pilot. The transition took place a few feet above the runway, with the aircraft relying solely on its fixed wings for cruise. Vertical propellers got the aircraft off the ground but remained stationary during forward flight.

According to Beta, the transition flight will provide key data the manufacturer will use to validate its design choices, as it works to type certify its eVTOL with the FAA. The eCTOL variant of Alia is expected to be given the all-clear about one year before then. But the company intends to conduct more crewed eVTOL transitions in the coming months.

The runway-independent aircraft will first be deployed by the U.S. military. Beta in January wrapped up its first eCTOL deployment for the Air Force and has delivered both aircraft and electric chargers to Eglin Air Force Base (KVPS) in Florida for Air Force testing.

The manufacturer also continues to collaborate with AFWERX, the innovation arm of the Air Force with which it has worked since 2020. Together, Beta and AFWERX in 2022 conducted the first airman flight of an electric aircraft.

Beyond the military, Beta expects its eVTOL to be used by cargo carriers and passenger-carrying operators. It has electrification partnerships with U.S. FBOs Atlantic Aviation and Shoreline Aviation to install charging stations for eVTOL and eCTOL service at FBO terminals from coast to coast.

As of March, the company has installed chargers at 19 locations, with a further 50 in the permitting or construction process. The systems are designed to accommodate both of Beta’s flagship models, but also those of its competitors.

Beta’s eVTOL customers include the United Postal Service, LCI, Blade Air Mobility, and Canada’s Helijet. Air New Zealand, meanwhile, has opted for the eCTOL Alia variant. Customers United Therapeutics and Bristow Group are looking to introduce both aircraft.

Like this story? We think you’ll also like the Future of FLYING newsletter sent every Thursday afternoon. Sign up now.

The post Beta Makes First Crewed eVTOL Transition Flight appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

According to Electra, the aircraft is able to operate with ground rolls of 150 feet, capable of carrying up to nine passengers or 2,500 pounds of cargo, and sports a range of 500 nm.

The company did not announce the contract amount that was awarded under the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) but said it is expected to continue through the end of the year.

“The contract allows Electra to partner with the U.S. Navy and its stakeholders to explore the use cases for Electra’s eSTOL technology, as well as potential aircraft configuration extensions, to enhance the efficiency of delivering military logistics services in environments with minimal infrastructure or other operational challenges,” Electra spokesperson Barbara Zadina told FLYING.

• READ MORE: Electra.aero Nabs $1.9M Army Contract for Electric Aircraft Testing

The contract announcement comes days after the company reported the U.S. Army had issued a $1.9 million contract to experiment with the hybrid-electric aircraft to perform powered wind tunnel testing.

“With our differentiated combination of hybrid-electric propulsion and a blown fixed wing, we can offer Pacific theater-relevant payloads and ranges, and the ability to operate from rough, soccer-field-sized spaces as well as many naval vessels and adjacent assets, all from day one,”  Ben Marchionna, Electra’s director of technology and innovation, said in a statement. 

• READ MORE: Electra.aero Surpasses 2000 Orders for Hybrid-Electric Aircraft

In addition to logistic utility, the company said the eSTOL aircraft could also enable expeditionary power generation, mesh networking, and potentially serve as an essential node for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) employment.

“These are all game changers for force modernization initiatives within the Navy and Marine Corps,” Marchionna said.

The post Navy to Explore Use of eSTOL Aircraft, Issues Contract to Electra appeared first on FLYING Magazine.