While Lt. Col. Christine Mau was chosen to be the Air Force’s first female F-35 pilot, she said one of her most memorable career moments came as an F-15E pilot. While speaking at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum on Oct. 6, Mau, the 33rd Operations Group deputy commander at Eglin AFB, Fla., said she racked up over 2,000 flying hours in the F-15E Strike Eagle, including during multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan with successful strikes. One of her most memorable sorties occurred when she and her wingman helped take out key leaders of the Haqqani network within minutes of arriving on the scene. While refueling over central Afghanistan, she and her wingman were retasked with supporting special forces in eastern Afghanistan. “So I said, ‘Sweet, see ya,’ left my wingman on the tanker and I went straight there,” Mau said. While checking in with the joint terminal attack controler, an MQ-9 Reaper fired a Hellfire missile at the Haqqani fighters. She was able to laser-spot-track the MQ-9’s target and drop a 2,000-GPS guided weapon within two minutes of checking in with the JTAC. Her wingman then rolled in, hooked her mark through the data link, and dropped a weapon within one minute of checking on. “For those of you with any concept of fighter aviation, that shortened kill chain is incredibly impressive, incredibly impressive, and it can only be done by lots and lots of practice and great sensors and weaponry that we have,” Mau said. All five targets were hit. “So it was a pretty good day, and we killed a lot of bad guys and kept coalition forces safe,” Mau said.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. may have moved on from Air Force Chief of Staff to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but he is keeping an eye on the Air Force’s effort to “re-optimize for great power competition”—and is pleased by what he sees. At a Defense Writers Group meeting March…