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.
The Air Force is on track to reach its annual goal of graduating 1,500 new pilots that had proved elusive to this point, one year after the service launched a sweeping overhaul of its undergraduate pilot training program, Air Education and Training Command said Sept. 14.
