COS- Having our own Air Force jets flying overhead constantly, I’m surprised more of Colorado Springs isn’t reacting to the F-18 crash in a San Diego residential area. The pilot ejected safely, but left his plane to plow into American homes.
Where did the skin-saving ingrate think he was? Iraq? Our schools have got to place more emphasis on Geography.
This pilot’s military mindset was clear: the plane may be expensive, but the most important piece of ordnance is himself. More specifically, his TRAINED self. The time and training invested in him. In San Diego, the Marines saved a pilot, the multi-million dollar plane was lost, and there was some collateral damage. But this time it was AMERICAN.
Is that just like a video game player, press SAVE GAME, without regard to averting catastrophe? Because you don’t get any credit for saving the health points of other players, especially not the lives of the non-players in the simulated background. Outside virtual reality, it’s the same thing: in American wars, usually those background lives are foreign anyway. Collateral.
Where are we supposed to train our Top Guns? They need open skies like those of Afghanistan, where they can experience the real combat environment, where they can bail out and abandon their flying bombs into people who don’t matter.
Or have University City non-combatant Americans living too close to the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar become that too?
In fact, the only one whose life seems to matter is fighter jet pilot. Investigators can find a fourth body in the home, can find three homes and four vehicles destroyed, and find the F/A-18D Hornet suffered a loss of power, but investigators can’t identify the perpetrator beyond that he’s a 20-something lieutenant with an Attack Squadron.
Going down with the ship means accepting responsibility. Do they do that anymore? Going down with a plane is even more vital. It means using your last breath to steer the dangerous projectile you’ve become away from others.
Have I read somewhere that the military has lowered its requirements for who can be a pilot? Before Top Gun, film audiences were led to believe to be an officer meant you also had to be a gentleman.
They had to condemn several homes just for the toxic residue. Support the Troops.