Two South Carolina Air National Guard F-16 pilots safely ejected after their jets collided during a training flight Tuesday night in Jefferson County, Ga. The pilots, assigned to the 169th Fighter Wing, were flying a routine night training exercise when their jets collided at 9:15 p.m. There were no injuries on the ground as the jets crashed in wooded areas in the military training area, the South Carolina Air National Guard said in a post on its Facebook page. The crash was the latest in a series of military jet mishaps and the second USAF F-16 accident in the last week. An Air Force Thunderbirds F-16 crashed on June 2 after a flyover at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., where President Obama was giving the commencement address. A Navy Blue Angels pilot was killed after his F/A-18 crashed on June 2 during a practice airshow in Smyrna, Tenn., and two F/A-18s collided off the coast of North Carolina in late May. The two pilots and two weapons system officers involved in that crash safely ejected.
A new Air Force plan for how many fighters it needs in the next decade marks a sharp upturn from what it thought it needed just seven years ago. But analysts worry that the aspirational plan now in Congress' hands doesn’t make a tight enough connection to national strategy.
