On the day it is retired from service, the Air Force officially bestows the nickname Aardvark on the General Dynamics F-111 in ceremonies at the Lockheed Martin plant in Fort Worth, Texas, where the aircraft was built. The new official name formalizes what crews had been unofficially calling the aircraft for years.
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.
