Happy Birthday, US Air Force

The US Air Force turned 56 today. A lot of folks think it doesn't look a day over 30.

How the Air Force stays looking young:

1) Amongst other things the Air Force runs a marathon on or around it's birthday every year at Wright Patterson AFB in Ohio (the birthplace home and future of aviation huaah.). It's way too hot to run a marathon in Ohio in September, so the course gets pretty grueling. For long stretches the only shade is provided by the thin shadows of the electric wires overhead. I've run the full 26.2 mile course, and ran in those shadows to fool myself that it was cooler. Fortunately a ton of volunteers come out and support this event, so there are great water/ aid stations every mile or so along the way. And a cool medal and shirt.

The marathon course runs in and out of the gates of the sprawling Wright-Pat complex. In September 2001 the race was cancelled at the last minute due to security issues; 2000 runners lining up for ID checks at every gate would really suck the fun out of marathoning. The Marines came through, and in a gesture of supreme magnanimity offered free entry to the Marine Corps Marathon (generally considered one of the world's finest) for everyone who had entered the AF Marathon that year. Semper Fi!

This past year, as a gesture of appreciation, an Air Force Captain won the Marine Corps Marathon.

This doesn't stop the other services from making fun of Air Force physical fitness standards. That's why the USAF will soon adopt:
2) New Fitness Standards. This will make the other branches stop laughing at the Air Force for using stationary bike riding to determine individual fitness. There was a great e-mail thing going around a while back that listed things to do during cycle ergometry. "Wear a helmet" "bring rolled up newspapers and deliver them", "stand up and claim you're climbing a hill" etc. Hah! Those days are gone! Nobody will ridicule the manly mile-and-a-half run! With push ups and sit ups!

3) Another way the USAF stays looking young is new, slimming uniforms. This will also give the Army, Navy and Marines something to make fun of so the Air Force folks can avoid being the butt of fitness-related jokes.

4) After exercising and showering and putting on new uniforms, Air Force guys sit around and think up stuff like how to put 80 500-pound JDAMS on a B2 Stealth Bomber. (If you think that's nothing less then the absolutely most high-tech dose of non-nuclear lethality ever conceived by the human mind, you're right! This enables one B2 to deliver the firepower of every bombing mission ever done in World War II combined, or something like that. On a stealth bomber! (Disable pop-up stopper for video clip)

Now as a gesture of goodwill I will translate the preceding paragraph into French using the Google Language tool.

Quatre) Après avoir exercé et versé et mis dessus de nouveaux uniformes, les types de l'Armée de l'Air s'asseyent autour et pensent vers le haut de la substance comme la façon mettre 80 500-livres JDAMS sur un bombardier de B2 Stealth. (si vous pensez qui sont quelque chose moins puis absolument la plupart de dose de technologie de pointe de létalité non-nucléaire jamais conçue par l'esprit humain, vous avez raison! Ceci permet à un B2 de fournir la puissance de feu de chaque mission de bombardement jamais faite dans la guerre mondiale II combiné, ou à quelque chose comme cela. Sur un bombardier de stealth! (neutralisez le taquet instantané pour l'agrafe visuelle)

5) "Shaping the Battlespace" - No one thinks up cool terminology for stuff like the USAF! Shaping the battlespace is what you do with 80 JDAMS on a Stealth bomber, or any of the other cool flying explosive stuff the guys at Wright Pat think up. Here's a reprint of a post I did a while back on the topic:

QUAGMIRE PREVENTION

Hey, Kim Jung-Il, you may enjoy this Washington Post story on how the US Air Force "shaped the battle space" in Iraq. Here's an excerpt:

"We were surprised when they [the U.S. pilots] discovered this place," said Khalidi, 28, a Republican Guard captain from a military family. It was late at night, a strong sandstorm was blowing, the vehicles were hidden under the trees, and the soldiers thought they were safe, he said. But two enormous bombs and a load of cluster bombs hit their targets on a tract of agricultural land in the Sabaa Abkar ("Seven Virgins") area of northern Baghdad, killing six members of Khalidi's unit and destroying much of their equipment.

"This affected the morale of the soldiers, because they were hiding and thought nobody could find them," he said. "Some soldiers left their positions and ran away. When the big bombs hit their target, some of the vehicles just melted.

See that? We affected their morale. That's the secret. Affect their morale.

And I think that the idea of melted enemy tanks should bring a tear of joy to any combat veterans eye. Like the view of A-10's, the only aircraft ever designed around a cannon, diving in on enemy armor; it's just a damn pretty thing to see.

Happy Birthday, USAF! Keep 'em Flying!