Go To Guns

COF #6 $19.95

Fighter pilots study their opponents the way football teams study game films. How good are their jets? How hard to they fly them? Will they be able to shoot me down? The questions are simple, the answers are a matter of life and death.

To look at our opponents, we took our Challenge of Flight cameras to where they fly the jets we may one day fight: Moscow. What we saw was chilling. The awesome MIG-29 Fulcrums, the SU-27 fighters, and three of the world's deadliest strategic bombers. Piloted with an abandon not often seen in the West.

Are we really the world's top guns? Judge for yourself. It's all here, some of the hottest, most unusual flying we've filmed, set to music, edited for continuity, but largely without interruption so you can watch it the way we pilots do. If you fly, this is your game film. Join us for a first hand look at the adversary air power of mother Russia.

Your job ... get through to the Target. The Enemy's job ... to stop you and your jet.

This is the story of the high-speed run, the Target Run .. against a gauntlet of AAA, SAMs and hostile MIGs from an enemy that wants to blow you out of the sky. The bomb run can be called one of the most task saturated environments in aviation: Switchology. Flying the jet. Head in and head out. Confusion on the radio. Dodging the enemy's fire.

In war, pilots must react to each situation as it comes. There are no milk runs. Each second is different. One sometimes wonders how it was that any jet got in and back out in one piece. Truly a fog bank of confusion, smoke, debris, and hostile fire, ... the pilot, flying low across the deck must find the friendlies and get his eyes on the target, drop his bombs and get out in a matter of seconds. More SAMs and AAA. Will it ever stop? ... Head'n home. Only, to come back tomorrow.

Pilots have lost control of airplanes since the very first days of flight. Stalls, spins and unusual attitudes have long challenged new and experienced aviators alike. The wrong angle of bank, too much pitch, too little airspeed, equipment failure, or any combination of these and dozens of other conditions -- often lead to an airplane desperately "Out of Control."

Those that fly know these dangers. They know that there are inescapable boundaries separating what is safe from what can kill. Though they train to recognize those boundaries, to stay within the margins that will bring them home to fly another day, airplanes still go out of control. Every pilot knows that staying in control is yet another CHALLENGE OF FLIGHT!

Flight is no and never has been a boundless expanse. Rather, aviators live with immutable rules, inescapable constraints, physical and scientific limits that stand as surely before them as gravity itself.

There are limits on speeds and altitudes, g-forces, human factors; limits on weapons, weights, loadings, and countless other variables. The Challenge and the job for the engineers and the test pilots, is to overcome these limits. New engines, new materials, new design concepts force old limits out of the way -- and turn over to flight testing, the mysteries, risks, dangers, and often cataclysmic outcomes of the new ones.

Once the boundaries are set, one's imagination is free to explore new horizons and again be part of the timeless CHALLENGE .. to Push the Limits of Flight.

No job is more hazardous than Carrier Air operations. Yet, few Navy pilots would trade their seats for any land-based aircraft.

The cat launch: nothing feels better than a good solid cat stroke. A naval aviator plans for the worst. A soft or cold cat, locked flight controls, improper attitude, engine failures, all contribute to the long list of potential problems that could mean a lost aircraft and a hot seat into the drink.

The recovery: the most challenging phase of flight. With steady seas and a bright sun, pilots say they can cat a trap all day long. But add in-flight emergencies, mechanicals, blown tires, pitching decks, and low fuel states, and the recovery becomes a test of confidence, skill and nerves.

The best trained professionals in the world ... steeped in the knowledge that they must do their jobs well because, cruising across the vast expanse of the oceans, there is ... Nowhere Else to Go!