There is a cadre of airmen who put the “straight” in straight shooting F-16 Vipers by using boresighting to recalibrate the fighter’s 20 mm cannon after weapons maintenance work and hard landings. Journalist SrA. Gena Armstrong reports that one such group of airmen at Misawa AB, Japan, go through exacting training to learn how to align the cannon with the pilot’s head’s up display targeting system. Weapons trainer SSgt. Eric Reid notes that the three-hour process, requiring a boresight telescope at the back end of the aircraft and a collimeter, or targeting scope, at the front, “can be tedious at times.”
The U.S., South Korea, and Japan flew an unusual trilateral flight with two U.S. B-52H Stratofortress bombers escorted by two Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-2s, and two ROK Air Force KF-16 fighters—both countries’ respective variants of the F-16—July 11. That same weekend, the top military officers of the three nations…