An Air National Guard pilot ejected safely from his F-15D on Friday afternoon during a training flight when he found he could no longer control the fighter and was losing altitude, reports the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The two-seat version of the F-15 Eagle, which had just been cleared to fly recently following the Air Force-wide grounding of F-15 A-D models, crashed into the ocean about 1:37 p.m. The newspaper noted that the Hawaii ANG’s 199th Fighter Squadron still has seven of its 20—make that 19—F-15s grounded pending further review of the serious structural problems USAF has found in 162 Eagles. According to the newspaper, this is the first Loss of an F-15 by the 199th FS since it began flying Eagles in 1987. The Hawaii Air Guard stopped all training flights, but has kept its fighters on alert status for air defense missions.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. still “believes” in his mantra of “Accelerate Change or Lose”—and indicated the doctrinal changes it produced when he was Air Force Chief of Staff played a role in the service’s recent response to Iran’s aerial assault on Israel, he…