Fighter squadrons, including a class of F-22 student pilots, from across the East Coast recently convened in Georgia for the Air National Guard’s largest fighter integration and air-to-air training exercise. The event, Sentry Savannah 16-3, included F-22s along with T-38s, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, and KC-135 tanker support at Savannah ANGB, Ga., according to an Air Combat Command release. F-22 student pilots from Tyndall AFB, Fla., flew in the exercise as a graduation event in a “dynamic and stressful training environment to put the skillsets they have learned to the test” in the exercise, Capt. Troy Pierce, 43rd Fighter Squadron A-flight commander, said in the release.
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.
