The 83rd Fighter Weapons Squadron at Tyndall AFB, Fla., once again has hosted fighter units testing their combat capability. F-15s and F-16s from Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, traveled to Tyndall to practice dissimilar air combat tactics and fire live weapons during a Combat Archer exercise, “the only cradle-to-grave fighter weapon system evaluation,” says Lt. Col. Terry Scott, 83rd FWS commander. The Tyndall unit hosts different units from the Air Force and other services or nations almost every two weeks. The Mountain Home fighters also flew a Combat Banner mission, in which the pilots shoot at a banner extended from a Learjet via a 2,000-foot cable.
After years of experiments and tests, senior Air Force leaders say they're on the verge of using C-17s and other cargo aircraft to launch cruise missiles via airdrop, touting the development as a way to bolster the combat fleet and a major shift in the service’s mindset.