How the US Military Spends Over $44 Billion On Warplanes | Boot Camp | Insider Business

thank you Department of Defense has a budget of 817 billion dollars for fiscal year 2023. more than 44 billion is going towards adding new warplanes to its Fleet which doesn't include the costs of training and maintenance from the estimated lifetime maintenance of 75 billion for the mv-22 Osprey Fleet to the 400 000 helmet fighter pilots wear to operate the F-35 this is how the military spends

billions of dollars on its warplanes lightning two the Marine Corps multi-role fighter jet is equipped with the most advanced sensor Suite of any fighter in history the most powerful engine of any jet in the world which can reach a top speed of 1200 miles per hour it's just revolutionized what fighter aircraft are capable of and these are the pilots training to fly that 100 million dollar

aircraft a lot of people just think you know you show up fly and then go home have a beer but it's not all like that not only are you flying but you're talking about four different radios you're working the radar you're working the T flare you're working the actual Optical system there while you're still navigating talking to ATC and then working weapons on top of that

and Pilots spend a year training to fly the F-35 Bravo here at the Marine Corps Air Station in Beaufort South Carolina this is a pilot's last stop before getting deployed to a fleet Squadron overseas and it's here they learn to handle the multi-role fighter jet in a variety of missions we do strikes so aerial interception we do ocadca so offensive counter error defensive counter error arm

reconnaissance and then really the bread and butter though is seeds expression of enemy air defenses the pilots we met are part of marine fighter attack Squadron 501 also known as the Warlords once you complete here they send you out to the fleet squadrons you know out in Yuma or Japan student pilots in the training Squadron have already completed flight school so training is focused specifically on

operating the f-35b eventually every fighter pilot that comes through the Marine Corps is going to go flying F-35 foreign Michael Watts my major in the Marine Corps my grandfather was a pilot in World War II and I would always go to his house see his models of his B-25 bomber and also my father was a Navy pilot in Vietnam so I kind of grew up with

it you know in my blood right here we're just basically starting you learn how to fly the airplane and then you go through all the different Mission sets and basic skills because there are only so many jets that can fly at a time most of the Pilot's instruction comes on the ground in the simulator and in the classroom we weren't allowed to film some classified aspects

of the Pilot's instruction but we were allowed to film the pilots practicing the aircraft's most unique capabilities and go behind the scenes as they suited up for a training mission during training it's crucial for the pilots to get comfortable executing the f-35b's stove Maneuvers because they'll have to master those techniques on an aircraft carrier really the main thing is when we fly off the ship so

when I get out to Japan here in a few weeks I'll eventually be learning how to fly off the ship how do we get on there we do vertical Landings how do we take off we do short takeoffs and so that's really the big reason why we're doing that Lockheed Martin makes three variations of the F-35 lightning II but the Marine Corps F-35 Bravo is the

only one with stoval capabilities this feature is a big reason why the Marine Corps 2019 Aviation Plan called for replacing its current Fleet of aircraft with more than 350 f-35bs we're replacing all of the Hornets all the areas and all the Prowlers with f-35s conventional Jets need about 3 000 feet for takeoff but in optimal conditions an f-35b can take off in just a couple hundred

feet for a takeoff we get onto the runway and then at that point is when we initiate a conversion we literally just hit a button and then the plane light goes through its like Transformer sequence right once that's complete we're now what's called stove mode there's different kinds of short takeoffs we can do my favorites the the button it's called the button stow and as I'm

accelerating down the runway and literally just click a button and then the plane will take off by itself it's pretty pretty incredible and then shortly after takeoff we can convert back to Conventional mode once we get to a certain AirSpeed once in the air actually handling the jet isn't the most difficult aspect of operating it it's actually a really easy airplane to fly it's more difficult

to process the amount of information it provides to you I would say knowing where to look at the right time the student Pilots already have experience flying jets so much of their training is focused on utilizing technology unique to the f-35b a lot of the difficulty is trying to absorb all the information the Jet's giving you operate all the sensors and the systems at the same

time and fly and really that's probably the number one struggle once a practice mission is complete Pilots must take on another of the Jet's unique features executing a vertical Landing having never done it it was an experience my brain telling me not to slow down because uh and the Hornet slow down that meant you're going to fall out of the sky it's a normal approach to

Landing like you're as if you're going to the runway right and then you're going to level off and then set a certain ground speed and then at a certain distance from the pad you're going to start a deceleration and all that is is just a click of a button and then from there you're making sure that you're centered on the pad then you just push forward

on the stick and then descend right onto the pad [Applause] I would say the first time doing a vertical landing and the f-35b is is pretty crazy you practice it a lot in the Sim you do it you know dozens of times in the simulator but the first time you do it in the plane just slowing down for the first time like that and hovering over

a pad with over 30 000 pounds of metal 150 feet in the air is pretty neat usually you have like the world kind of coming at you when you're flying right and so you're kind of sitting there just like looking outside as if you're like in the tower or something and you trust that you're you're fine there you know that you're still flying before stepping foot

in the cockpit student Pilots need to familiarize themselves with the gear needed to operate the f-35b starting with their anti-gravity suit which helps prevent them from losing Consciousness while operating the jet it's a fabric material that has bladders inside of it and whenever you pull G it uses pressure from the engine to inflate and then it prevents your blood from pulling down to your legs and

it pushes it up to your abdomen as much as possible each Pilot's g-suit is custom made to fit perfectly around their lower body and then we have a flight jacket that we put on and it has a bunch of survival gear the Pilot's flight jacket is filled with a multitude of survival tools in the event that they have to eject from the aircraft including a flare

emergency strobe light compass survival knife extra water whistle radio and an oxygen mask they have a code card for hand and arm signals just a signal search and rescue basically then they have a signaling mirror just to Signal the aircraft was just a mirror in the reflection some less conventional survival tools are supplied by the pilots themselves I was trying to take my wallet in case

I have to to land somewhere else other than back here that's happened to me before you went somewhere yesterday you don't have any wallet or phone or anything which is kind of difficult to definitely take my wallet with me every time in the event the pilots have to eject from the jet their flight jacket is embedded with a unique safety feature there's armor train lines that

are routed throughout the jacket when you eject they pull your arms basically in towards your body you're basically ensuring that your arms aren't going to get flailed out into the wind the jacket is also equipped with a flotation device in case the pilot has to eject over a body of water so as soon as it touches the water it will inflate the entire jacket so they

don't have to do anything if their arms are broken or anything after ejection last but not least the pilots learn to utilize the most technologically advanced piece of equipment their 400 000 helmets each helmet is custom fit to its wearer based on a 3D scan of the Pilot's head it's also equipped with noise canceling headphones night vision and a forward-facing camera that records each flight the

Pilot's heads-up display is projected directly onto their visor rather than on the glass at the front of the cockpit thanks to two small projectors inside the helmet this allows the pilot to easily view key data such as altitude AirSpeed and Direction since the jet is able to help us so much really flying should be second nature that way you can focus on all the information that

the Jets giving you finally the f-35's distributed aperture system creates a 360 degree view of the Jet's surroundings by stitching together feeds from six cameras mounted on the plane enabling the pilot to see through the base and walls of the aircraft I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of work it takes to to become a pilot and a fire pilot specifically a one-hour flight

even a simulated one might mean up to six additional hours of briefing gearing up flight inspections and debriefing not to mention the hours spent studying for each Mission so you could spend a whole day preparing and debriefing one single hour flight I think it's awesome to be in the fifth generation stealth fighter kind of at the tip of the spear it's a heavily weighted aircraft in

terms of the combat power that the Marine Corps brings to the fight and I'm honored to be a part of that it's definitely pretty cool to you know carry on that tradition and talk to my dad about everything that I'm doing now and how it relates to what he did all the airports that he flew into you know some of the ones that I've flown into

as well so he has stories it's pretty neat [Music] the F-35 may be the latest advancement in military aircraft but the A-10 Warthog has been supporting troops on the ground for nearly 50 years in 2007 the Air Force spent 1.1 billion to upgrade and replace the wings of 173 A-10 Thunderbolt 2 Planes which it expects to keep the aircraft flying until the late 2030s this is

the A-10 Thunderbolt 2. [Music] more commonly known as the warthog the Air Force uses the A-10 for close air support missions that require the plane to fly low to provide cover and assist ground troops in battle so our whole mission in life and our whole job in life is to take care of the men and women on the ground this only thing we think about the

only thing we train to is the only thing we talk about it's exactly what this airplane is built to do but these Pilots may be among the last to be trained to fly it for years the Air Force has considered retiring the A-10 in favor of the newer F-35 fighter jet and that might finally be happening with Congress approving the Air Force's plan to phase out

the A-10 over the next five to six years but the public debate over the need for the A-10 continues and while some a-10s are as much as 50 years old f-35s cost about 60 million more per aircraft and weren't built solely to support ground troops there may be a day that I am called to potentially help save someone's life when they're having the worst day of

their life that comes back to my training and making sure that I know what I'm doing in the jet so how vital is the A-10 and could the Air Force soon be without one of its most iconic warplanes the only base that 18 Pilots train at is at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base before they fly the A-10 Pilots train in the t-38 Talon during their initial Flight

Training in Texas they fly completely different based on their flight performance and characteristics the t-38 is kind of like a sports car it's quick it's agile it's fast but the A10 drives more like a Cadillac after graduating from Flight Training new pilots moved to their assigned posts really like the mission of the A-10 and thought it was super cool I like the idea that it doesn't

matter what I'm doing that I'm strictly there for people on the ground if you look at it not the most attractive looking plane if you will it's pretty pretty ugly doesn't have the swept back Wings it's got you know big Hershey bar Wings on it for like added stability so it's it's just a mean looking airplane and that's ultimately like what a warthog is what sound

does the A-10 make when it fires you know like bird bird and that's actually just the noise of the bullets exiting the barrel this is the Galway Avenger it's a 30 millimeter Gatling guns built by General Electric and this is the largest Gatling gun ever built and put into an airplane so it's got It's seven barrels it shoots at a maximum rate about 3 900 rounds

a minute there's almost no target that the Galway does not a valid weapon to use against as we go around the titanium bathtub is one of the features designed specifically to protect the pilot in the airplane so this whole panel right here where you see these giant Phillips head looking Fasteners that whole panel is titanium so you can you can hear all these are are Hollow

aluminum and that's Rock Solid titanium right there this was one of the first fighter types that incorporated that into the design of the airplane and it's the only one I know about that has a full bathtub encompassing the pilot uh behind this panel right here this is our single point refueling system right here so pull that cap off and fill the airplane up with fuel we

have four fuel tanks for a total of about 11 000 pounds of gas if I'm topped off I can fly for about three hours and then once you add in aerial refueling we can fly pretty much indefinitely and then as you're looking towards the back of the airplane you can see we have a lot of hard points a lot of weapon stations on the airplane there's

11 in total in between those we can carry up to 16 000 pounds of ordinance on those 11 weapon stations this is a mark 82 bomb body so a 500 pound bomb body it's just a blast and fragmentation type weapon that you drop it it's unguided on impact and it detonates this is a GPU 31 it's a 2 000 pound bomb with a GPS guidance kit

on the back of it so it's a coordinate seeking weapon meaning I can input a GPS coordinate and that's exactly where that weapon is going to go but how does the A10 stack up to the F-35 meant to replace it supporters of the F-35 say it has a huge stealth Advantage but detractors say it doesn't have the durability the A10 does thanks to features like the

titanium bathtub another concern is how F-35 Pilots are trained Insider reported that according to a 2022 training memo no F-35 Pilots are required to execute close air support training simulations in 2023 or 2024. for A-10 Pilots close air support is at the center of their training which starts here in a virtual reality simulator lab so they're going to start off in the VR lab and that's

going to give them the site pictures and the references on the ground and the references in the aircraft for the first time [Music] so simulators are extremely important they're able to practice everything in a safe environment with you know professional instructors before they get out and actually fly them on their own students familiarize themselves with the a10's control panels and starting procedures before moving on to

the flight simulator we're going to open our air-to-air refueling door at this point he was doing aerial refueling the submission that the students actually perform in the aircraft pretty early in their training pipeline historically without this lesson it's usually taken about 10 to 15 minutes of talking to the students through getting a successful hookup in Flight whereas now that we're able to have them practice with

this lesson they go out on that first flight having already done it before we want to make sure we want to take a look at our air speed as we're in formation with the tanker now the feedback we're getting from instructors is that they're just going right up to the boom and they're getting their hookup on their first try for the VR Sim you're getting the

muscle memory so the first time we practice in the jet we know physically what we're doing with our hands and we know where our eyes should be where we should gauge and then our IPS are helping us fine-tune those things after spending a month in the simulator and learning the basic operations of the aircraft Pilots begin flying training missions in the A-10 Captain Lindsay MADD Johnson

has five years of experience flying the A-10 today she's training for a new role to be a pilot on an A-10 demo team where she will highlight the capabilities of the warthog I am about two hours shy of 1200 hours in the in the A-10 itself they call it like a crawl Rock Run process so I did it in the Sim multiple times then we go

out to the airspace for my first time with a floor not actual floor but a simulated four or five thousand pagl and then I go here 2000 feet AGL a thousand feet AGL and then 500 feet a jail until I got through my first certification after Johnson completed a few rolls and Dives she moved on to simulating a strafe which is an attack on enemy Ground

Forces technique used in close air support operations so when we do close air support we are egressing as I say it from in front of the target area I'm going out about you know two two and a half miles away at about 500 feet and then I'm turning back around this way and as I'm about just outside of a mile I'll pop to about 30 degrees

nose High which allows me to get high enough to be able to see if there is what would be designated as the friendlies and what would be designated as the enemy on the ground and then as I visually acquire that out over my canopy rail I'm then rolling in using both ailerons my throttles are already in Max I'm rolling in and then I'm putting basically my

nose positioned down on what we consider to be like a 20 degree wire so rather than find straighten level I'm 20 degrees nose low towards the ground I learned about the A10 growing up I knew I wanted to do something kind of to pay homage to to my dad's time and service I was young When September 11th happened I was nine and he deployed two months

after September 11th happened that kind of stuck with me and I knew I wanted to do something that was going to give back to my country as well A10 debuted in combat in 1977 making it just shy of 50 years old which is one reason many want it to be retired for years the warthog has been the subject of debate between the U.S Air Force and

Congress some members of Air Force leadership have suggested retiring the A-10 to focus on developing more modern aircraft like the 80 million dollar F-35 more why would you want to retire the least expensive most accurate close air support system I don't want a retired Senator but the Air Force has to get bigger to do all this but Congress has fought those requests due to the success

of the A-10 in recent conflicts with Isis and the Taliban and the plane's overall cost efficiency it's not broke conflict that the United States has been in since Bosnia Grenada pretty much every contingent that the United States has been a part of the A-10 has been pretty much the leader of all that last year Congress approved an Air Force proposal to retire 21a10s reducing the total

Fleet to 260. plans to decommission the remaining planes in the next five to six years people don't realize how much maintenance actually goes into keeping these aircraft airworthy you know it's not like a car you know when we wake up in the morning we jump in the car start it and drive right these have starting issues they have leaks they're 40 50 years old they all

have somewhere between 13 000 to 15 000 flight hours on them uh and that exceeds the actual life expectancy of the airframe by you know five thousand seven thousand hours A10 critics may use the plane's maintenance issues to fuel their argument but the cost of maintaining the F-35 jumped 15 between 2018 and 2020. what happens to you when you finish bases so I'll be going to

Korea next this is fun to fly it does a job that no one else does and it's you're like you're good at that that is your thing that's the a10s thing after completing the six-month training program at Davis-Monthan newly certified A-10 Pilots will begin their careers as fighter pilots in the U.S Air Force the plane was built well before I was alive and knowing just like

the generations of people that flew the plane before me were looking at the exact same gauges that I'm looking at so it's it's a pretty unique experience I knew as like a younger child that I wanted to fly the A-10 my grandpa was in the Army he has seen the A-10 like when he was in the Army do things and so that was even more just

like a further drive to pursue the airplane while everybody knows us for the gun and its capabilities a thing that we take most pride in as an A-10 Community is protecting the lives of the men and women that are on the ground not all aircraft in the military's Arsenal are meant for combat transporting troops cargo and casualties over large distances is essential for any military and

the Air Force has a 340 million dollar solution do a little low actually [Music] these Air Force pilots are refueling their C-17 globemaster III at 26 000 feet in the air effect now be patient to see what it gets here really good the pilots rendezvous with a kc10 refueler jet that pumps gas down through a controlled Boom at 1100 gallons per minute yeah break away break

away break away it's one of three missions we saw while embedded with a crew training to fly the C-17 at 174 feet long and 55 feet tall the C-17 has a maximum payload of around 170 000 pounds and can land on runways shorter than 3 500 feet with just three crew members Manning the aircraft we can do everything from supporting contingencies so the war downrange that

we can support Cove admissions has been a big thing recently we can also do humanitarian missions so helping Evac sick patients wounded soldiers due to its high payload capacity c-17s were used in August 2021 to evacuate people from Afghanistan with one plane carrying 823 passengers the basic crew of a C-17 there's three of us there's a pilot a co-pilot and one loadmaster to my role here

as a C-17 load Master is to load these aircraft whether it be helicopters tanks Humvees ambulatory patients ultimately our mission is to support someone else the average salary of a C-17 pilot stationed at Travis Air Force Base is around 117 thousand dollars and the typical tour is about three years training happens here at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield California one hour Northeast of San Francisco

and before Pilots complete missions in the sky they practice the complicated Maneuvers in a state-of-the-art simulator it's pretty realistic we use it to practice emergencies that you can't practice in the jet or you wouldn't want to practice in the jet whether that's multiple engine losses or really poor weather conditions students train for emergencies like enemy threats and hydraulic failures but the first scenario is a simulated

engine fire could you please uh scan the number two engine for us uh engine fire indications and then I've got the radios you've got the checklist Roger a lot of crew coordination happens at the time so that's a good safe space for young co-pilots to first get the feel for what the stick and power inputs feel like before you go do it in the jet emergency

shut down checklist is completed the other two will include the land we're way too one left after practicing in the simulator the crew meets in the briefing room to plan a live training Mission uh so training flight tomorrow showtimes a little non-standard we can do 6 30 local showtime at base Ops pilots and crew spend hours the day before a mission discussing the route the objectives

and backup plans if anything goes wrong so if we're in a failure to disconnect position the main thing is just maintain a good stable platform keep doing what you're doing if you're Pilot Flying the crew finalized their plans and were dismissed to prepare for the flight precisely at 1000 the crew boarded the plane and ran through their final checklists [Music] the first exercise of the training

Mission refueling in midair so air refueling is basically anything about a gas station in the sky the whole concept there is we have two aircraft meeting at the same point in space so it can be potentially sensitive cargo you're carrying and you don't want to stop or perhaps there's just not a good place to land or maybe you don't have the time to land yeah a

little low actually where you kind of want it right now I would I I'd hold this so we'll be about a thousand feet below the other aircraft and then eventually closing that altitude Gap to where their boom that's the long pole that sticks out of the aircraft to actually pass the gas from their aircraft to ours we end up making contact with their boom now be

patients a good saying is uh you know aim small Miss small when we're air refueling we're focusing on very small details and trying to see like small movements because small movements that close can make a big impact refueling happens while Pilots maneuver the C-17 at 300 miles per hour nearly 30 000 feet in the sky contact for me I was thinking about improving my power movements

so my uh my stick movements so my right hand I was sitting in the right seat were pretty solid but like my my throttle movements could have been a lot better so it's something that I can work on in the future break away break away break away break nice update phase two of the mission involves low level flying so low level flying during the day we

can go as low as 300 feet above the ground which is pretty low for large aircraft and the intent there is to stay below the radar picture of a potential adversary so when you're lower there's a few tactical benefits that we have that help us get to a not so great spot in a safer manner that's what we need to supply what seat right we need

to fly 290. out there flying it we're watching our altitudes and making sure that we're clearing any obstacles or anything like that we also had another pilot in the back looking at the map in the chart calling out different Towers on each side of the route and helping us avoid them and clear them that way appreciate view huh yeah C-17 headed north towards Moses Lake Washington

to practice Landing in an assault zone so an assault zone is a short Runway typically they're about 3500 feet and then it has a marked Zone that's 500 feet long and our goal is to put our aircraft in the 500 foot box and then use max effort to stop on the remaining Runway Crews have to master landing on a traditional airstrip as well as temporary runways

so the Tactical part of the C-17 is it goes to fields that maybe have shorter runways or dirt runways and oftentimes those are in combat locations or our steer Fields pull back up on the stick and put a little bit of power in 500 feet will stop everybody minimum 300 feet from the zone 50 feet the final mission a combat offload back at the Travis Air

Force Base basically what we'll be doing is simulating a an expedited offload typically if we're in a situation in which we don't have the equipment to do a download if we have to get in and out really quick maybe a hospital location once we release the locks we'll say brakes released as well to the pilots and then they will hit the throttles release the brakes and

the pallet will go out of the app into the aircraft we'll call load clear close up and then we'll get out of here [Music] overall is a great story for everyone it was very busy and very long so it's always tough to go fly for six hours and constantly be engaged but I think everyone performed really well I think a lot of people relate cargo jetso

like an airliner but what we do I think is very different specifically we go anywhere and everywhere in the world sometimes that means you have lots of information on that Airfield sometimes it means you have none and so like I said you have to be a problem solver and really think on your toes so it's really rewarding when you go pick up you know 150 guys

who have been deployed for six months and you get to bring them home to their families not only does the mv-22 Osprey provide close air support it also carries troops and Cargo in and out of the battlefield it uses a unique feature that gives it the ability to land in harsh environments where traditional aircraft cannot but with several fatal crashes in the Ospreys past and high

maintenance costs proponents of the aircraft find themselves defending its place in the military's Fleet this is the mv-22 Osprey flown by the United States Marine Corps with a unit cost of about 84 million dollars it's the world's first production tilt rotor aircraft which means it takes off and lands vertically like a helicopter but flies like a traditional turboprop airplane we don't need that Runway to land

on and we don't need any type of air traffic control agency to get us there we can do it ourselves when grounded its rotor blades fold into itself making it small enough to travel on Naval carriers primary role is what we call assault support what that means is that we're good at carrying people in stuff places 1 500 feet over the range insiders spent a day

at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina to find out what it takes to fly the osprey before flying in Osprey Marine Corps Pilots must receive a four-year college degree and attend flight school to learn the basics after that you gained your wings and you show up at the fleet and you get about two months three months to learn how to fly the Osprey

Osprey Pilots spend 20 hours training in a simulator that was off limits to our cameras I wanted to have a plane that was at the Forefront of where the Marine Corps wanted to send things turns out that this was exactly the right plane for me today when we go fly we're going to do a whole bunch of various flight profiles we're going to go and shoot

tail gunnering and then we transition over to doing confined area Landings the training Mission begins with a briefing in the Squadron ready room we're going to take off at a new River as a section for the departure it's going to be a standard vertical takeoff to climb up to our en route altitude of 3500 feet safety is one of the most important topics of any Osprey

Mission briefing three U.S Marines are missing right now off the coast of Australia there have been 33 accidents resulting in 42 reported deaths since the osprey's first flight in 1989. the mv-22 originally in its induction phases and in testing unfortunately ended up having a few accidents along the way things that were worked out essentially over the years the Osprey became operational in 2007 and since then

safety components like nacelles and software have been redesigned and reconfigured I have over 800 flight hours on this plane with with zero issues that's in no small part to the maintenance efforts that are put forth by the Marines every day here crew chiefs at New River work as plain maintain containers when they're not aiding on missions even the smallest things on the Osprey have to be

looked at and are kept in good working order we make sure that we're we're flying the safest aircraft possible before every flight pilots and crew do a walk through of the Osprey to ensure everything is in working order does the Osprey just a big overview here each engine provides you 6 150 shaft horsepower so what that means for me up front is that I can go

from zero to 280 knots and climb from the surface always all the way up to 25 000 feet this is the air-to-air refueling probe this thing sticks out and lets me plug and refuel off of all kinds of different refueling assets and extends my range out Beyond three hours out to all the way my limits that I can just stay awake for these big missiles here

contain the engine itself and then also will contain all the different gearbox systems and different accessory Drive systems that keep my aircraft powered up and flying both hydraulically and electrically we have seats all up and down the left and right side that hold 24 troops and then any type of cargo that we can do here we have a lot of redundancy we have three hydraulic systems

we have three flight control computers we have four generators that'll operate and they can all back each other up so if any one component fails there's numerous layers of backup and redundancy that allow this plane to keep flying and keep fighting regardless of what happens the down wash coming off of the Osprey is about the same as a category 2 hurricane [Music] 219 . takeoff begins

with the rotors in the vertical position lifting the plane off the ground after reaching the desired altitude Pilots convert the aircraft to airplane mode I have what's called a thumb wheel on the throttle there is a little knob that I just move with my thumb it's as easy as this takes little to no effort for me what that means inside the plane and what the plane

is doing is that I have three different hydraulic systems that are controlling what's called conversion actuators and these conversion actuators are gigantic screws and those screws twist and make the whole nacelle structure move up and down [Music] crew flies North to begin the first exercise of the mission firing the Ospreys machine gun at Targets on the ground on the mv-22 we have a rat mounted weapon

system we'll be firing the m240 Delta today which is a 7.62 by 51 caliber belt-fed machine gun the rate mounted weapon system is used in a defensive role as we're carrying troops and cargo into an area if we're engaged we can effectively suppress that enemy fire or threat foreign the standard four-person Osprey crew consists of two pilots and two crew chiefs so I'll be leading to

the aircraft through the flight profile I serve as the link between the pilots and the back of the plane that's between our cargo anyone we're carrying I shoot the gun you name it Sergeant leneve will also be helping train an additional member on today's flight I'm Lance copper Trantham and I'm a crew chief on the v22 Osprey every day is a new challenge and a new

opportunity to learn something today we're going to be simulating engagement by a surface-to-air threat which is going to be a missile system and we're going to attempt to suppress that threat all right let me uh it's the runway Target now there's multiple vehicles and stuff on the on the runway all the fires are going to be north of the runway so off the left side of

the aircraft right now we've got a contact two Targets Chiefs trained to aim and fire the m240 Delta using the plane's forward momentum it definitely takes a lot of concentration with the effects of your forward momentum getting the rounds to hit your target you have to aim in a certain way so that your rounds hit with the proper momentum if their target is to the left

of the plane they aim low and left if they shoot off the right side of the plane they aim high and right we're going to basically be looking for good impacts on the target in the training Mission second phase the crew flies over a field to practice Landing in a confined area without a Runway so we'll do what we call tactical straight-ins where we go from

airplane mode going 240 knots and bringing it all the way to a hover inside the zone so it's going to it's kind of theater in the software the automated is going to fly the plane all the way along the course of flight and bring us into a hover over a specific Landing point so it's pretty cool Ford thrust comes off the propellers that generates lift over

the wing just like any traditional fixed-wing aircraft then Pilots redirect that thrust by converting into helicopter mode we start shifting that lift Vector backwards to slow ourselves down or forward to accelerate ourselves and we go from there after completing confined area Landings and takeoffs the focus shifts to the third exercise of the mission training crew chiefs how to measure the plane's distance to the ground with

just their eyes they have to calibrate their eyes to give accurate distance calls to the deck and that's that's a challenge and it changes based on what you're expecting to see but they need to happen quickly they need to say exactly the right thing at the right time so that we know what we need to do and take take that information on as like actionable information

she'll she'll get it down during a daytime Landing inside a grassy Zone and then we'll take her and we'll fly her at night and we'll put on uh mbg's night vision goggles on her and she'll have a 40 degree field of view looking through toilet paper tubes and then all of that distance estimation that she's worked on starts to go away that's part of the training

that we we work with them on flying the Osprey for the for the Marine Corps has meant to me that I can be operationally employed in a very wide range of mission profiles as we shift over to the Pacific Theater what we're dealing with are longer transits over water without land bases for us to operate from the Osprey is also used to provide humanitarian Aid personally

I've done Hurricane Relief operations in Puerto Rico and I've been able to deliver food and water to people that NAB needed it we were able to land in zones baseball fields all across the island the people were writing uh help in their yards and stones and trash to get the Ospreys to come in and land and we were able to bring food and water and medical

supplies all over the island today was great it was a good flight a lot of the future operation concepts of the Marine Corps are going to focus on the Osprey doing more of what it does and doing it better I'm actually applying to the Naval Academy right now because I am interested in becoming a pilot if I get accepted I'll have four more years in school

Ghost Rider is a key asset in the department of defense's strategy to deter adversaries from sparking future conflicts it's about 43 pounds around itself so it's pretty big normally whenever we fire this it recoils about 43 inches back so you'll feel the kick definitely we feel it from the pilots up front fill everyone fills it this is the 105 millimeter cannon on the ac-130j gunship nicknamed

Ghost Rider the cannon is located here on the left side of the plain along with a 30 millimeter gun both weapons take out targets with extreme precision over the last 20 years in the Middle East the U.S military used the AC-130 to provide heavy fire against insurgents to protect U.S forces on the ground but now the military says its current adversaries in places like the asia-pacific

region and Europe require it to be more targeted and the newest model of the AC-130 is meant to help it achieve this Mission continue to let this target develop for a second let's get eyes on them and if they start moving this Direction please let me know which BP is going to be the closest Insider visited Cannon Air Force Base in Clovis New Mexico to find

out how the Ghost Rider is built for precision and how training on this gunship is evolving to prepare Crews for the threats of tomorrow we're able to get places faster and stay there longer it's engines are roughly 25 more efficient which means we've got roughly 25 percent more load of time we have the ability to stay on station for that much longer also with the more

fuel efficient engines and it is roughly 20 faster that's compared to the ac-130w the J model became fully operational in 2017 to Aid in close air support for ground troops gather Intel from above and perform controlled bombings with precision [Music] all right so yeah this is going to be the 30 millimeter is our gal 23. it's an incredible weapon very precise the J model was built

with a Precision strike package which has two weapons starting with the 30 millimeter gun so it's going to be made up of a barrel upper receiver in the feeder assembly and then within it it's going to have your flexible shoots that feeds the ammo into it Air Force leadership has said that because of its accuracy the 30 millimeter gun is almost like a sniper rifle this

is going to be the 105 millimeter Hauser normally you have two Gunners that are going to be here working it one's going to be loading it the other one's going to be pulling the brass out and then there's going to be where we store the ammunition for it so the firing is also going to be like the same for the 30 millimeter the Personnel at the

mission operator palette are going to select the gun and from there where the sensor is pointing the gun will slave to that position and then you just fire it with a trigger based off the Hands-On throttle and stick so this is going to be the mop or refer to the mission operator palette so in these two seats here you're gonna have your combat system officer on

the left seat and then the weapon system officer here on the right seat and these are correlated with the sensors on the outside of the aircraft so for this one it's going to be the sensor off the nose of the aircraft and then for this seat it's going to be the sensor on the left hand side over there so for this this is where we control

all the Munitions a lot of the radios we're talking to the guys on the ground and then both the guns what's unique about us is we've got two of I think the best sensors in the Department of Defense personally and the MX 20 and the mx25 these two sensors are a key element in how the ac-130j crew collects accurate intelligence and confirms the location of targets

before employing its weapons due to the sensors classified design our cameras were not permitted to film them when the lenses were exposed all right so right here on the pilot station in is also located at the co-pilot station you're going to have your heads up display um just extra essay for the pilot it's going to give them a lot of their navigational tools so they can

see and then maintain essay while having eyes out on the aircraft's wall while flying as well that way they don't have to look down it kind of just helps keep the crew safe in addition to the heads-up display you have the side heads-up display for the pilot because both weapons are on the left side of the plane pilots fly in circles when observing and firing on

targets it's going to help with the employing the Munitions and it gives them better essay on the battlefield another update to the J model are its more efficient engines which allow the plane to fly 25 percent farther and 25 percent longer than the earlier AC-130 models luckily there are several amenities on board to provide Comfort on these longer flights pretty cool feature is we have a

microwave in addition to a coffee maker as well so kind of a nice way on the longer flights to heat up your food that way you're just not eating cold stuff all the time so yeah actually for myself I was on the longest flight in acj history 16 hours headed out to Japan and it was nice just to heat up some warm burritos as opposed to

having like a cold sandwich something like that so we do have a toilet on the aircraft for the longer flight that's super nice to have [Music] so it just comes down like that and then there's a little curtain for privacy and then you just flip it up and yeah just like a normal toilet so it's definitely needed on those longer flights now with us being out

of the global war on terror I mean it's not a proud anymore we're moving towards more current events happening in the Pacific uh maybe some things in Europe we've seen the news nicknamed the angel of death the AC-130 has been used in past Wars to provide heavy gunfire to protect troops on the ground or to clear out an area of enemy forces but that mentality is

changing in previous conflicts they're really simple people would run up on the side of mountains with soviet-era machine guns and you knew for a fact that that guy met the Rules of Engagement that was a legal strike to do according to the 2022 National defense strategy released by the Department of Defense a key priority moving forward is integrated deterrence which according to defense secretary Lloyd Austin

means having Weapons Systems and technologies that make adversaries think twice about engaging in conflict that's why the J model's Precision weaponry and sensors make it a crucial military asset and why Ghost Rider Pilots are now trained on knowing when to engage in Conflict there's a lot of training that's required for us to shift away from the global war on terror we still fundamentally want to protect

the friendly Force but we have to be Discerning and that's the really tough part so you want to train to hey you got your your Spider Sense your Spidey senses are tingling let's play this out let's develop this scenario while not putting the friendly Force at risk right now we want to stop short of actual conflict we were going to take off we're going to go

up to the Clovis area for gunship Crews to prepare for potential conflicts abroad and become skilled in precise deterrences they perform weekly training Missions at Cannon Air Force Base which all begin with a pre-flight briefing I'd rather bust a timeline but be safe and rush to failure leading the mission today is Major Riley Feeney an evaluator pilot for weather out of here today uh it seems

to be just fine for takeoff however we may be getting gusting winds at like 270 uh up to 30 possibly 35 knots per the meth today's flight will begin with basic pilot training but will then move to a simulated kill or capture Mission a training scenario that will take lessons learned from previous Wars and force the crew to be more precise and cautious I it's been

a guy he's a arm Smuggler been working out of the town of Clovis stand as the weapons officer Captain rushi gohel has been tasked with creating a mission that will train the crew on scenarios they encounter it's all made up but it's based around the different threats that we'll see that we're fighting in the current fight we'll be working in building 1-0 particularly he's hidden up

in the shed right in the back the stories look like he's known to be uh traveling with a small Posse the crew will be attempting to locate a fictional threat who is thought to have a weapons cache the team must find the threat relay that information up the chain of command and then decide whether to neutralize him right right let's go to war boys [Music] [Music]

and copy take off clearance get a straightened out here bottom checklist has been called complete that's our ready to go Coke ready all right textbook well done once in the air the crew starts the training scenarios and so we went down to Roswell to get a couple of instrument approaches there are specific approaches with ground-based nav AIDS navigational AIDs that allow us to put the aircraft

in a safe position to land down in Roswell employer Speed Center Line first burn no side no Factor it was an excellent training iteration today because it was turbulent winds with Gusty winds just basically at eight on the 10 scale of difficult which I thoroughly love even if it's difficult for the remainder of the people on the crew all right yeah pulled just a little bit

too much stable 50. 40. 30. 20. kids and walking it down so we have an additional capability in this plane which can take us down to a hundred feet say you gotta absolutely sucked in weather and the ceiling is very low we can utilize this system to land safely and be aligned with the runway where you simply couldn't visually see the runway you get to follow

these guidelines and get yourself very low to the ground and land incredibly important if you get a ground party who's 300 miles away and they need you to come help them once the pilots finish practicing landing at Roswell the training shifts to the back of the plane unfortunately the live fire range was closed due to some extreme weather that had occurred recently however what we did

is a dry fire scenario all players all players the soft force is internal to objective building the crew began searching on the ground for the location of their fictional Insurgent all right I'm in the objective area uh just getting a quick Eyes On Target building unable to uh weapons yet after several minutes go hell spotted a potential Target I am contact currently about eight packs they

are unloading weapons from two trailers uh located 300 meters uh they look like they're uh game planning and get ready to move I don't know what direction all right hey and uh from Jackal from devil continue to let this target develop for a second let's get eyes on them and if they start moving this Direction please let me know which BP is going to be the

closest we will hold off on breaching until we have an idea of what these packs are going to do one of the items the crew was practicing today was following the rules of engagement before firing on a Target so the Rules of Engagement are and they were really really well defined by the kind of the tail end of what was the global war on terror the

explicit verbiage in them is is relatively classified but the idea is you have to meet certain criteria in order to be engaged able to PID two packs want to be carrying some sort of long cylindrical object before go hell fires the weapons the aircraft Commander must give consent you're clear to engage with 30 and 105 Mike five four three two one Splash several we are taking

cover you guys continue to prosecute until all packs are down I got six not moving just uh Duo running South closing on friendlies all right good impact good impacts all players touchdown jackpot objective the mission was a success and a vital scenario for possible upcoming threats we wanted to give it a little bit more of a flavor of say kind of the next theater that we're

looking into which is the indo-pacific theater and what we wanted to do today was kind of throw out hey look at this thing should you shoot it and really challenge people with well does it Meet The Rules of Engagement awesome hey appreciate you guys playing today I realized today was a lot more bumpy than you wanted it to be good news you got the mission done

real we get some parole to back in and honestly I thought that was a really good training rep for us today I thought the crew did very well they were very quick and all of their engagements and it's illegally the one thing I did want to bring up though was we were very expeditious and we were about 20 meters from danger close on the engagement for

that Romeo nine Echo we didn't do anything wrong it was contact everything was within limits we were out at like 230 meters away but it's one of those ones too like just as a technique and this is my instructional fix for the crew is any time that you're within 25 meters of a danger close engagement you probably should be talking to the to the j-tech so

I thought they did a good job but I thought Captain booed did an exceptional job of leading the crew which for me the big ticket here is watching Pilots watching aircraft commanders develop into leaders the potential of the ac-130j continues to grow to keep up with the military capabilities of its potential adversaries Air Force Special Operations Command has started testing a new high-energy laser weapon that

could one day replace the 105 millimeter cannon Air Force leadership says that with this targets could be permanently disabled without the slightest bang whoosh thump explosion or even aircraft engine hum it's very fun to take this tool which has just absolutely been a hammer in to go to war on terror and then pivoting it to just a queer creativity as king and and enabling that see

if I can find I see Lowe's see Walmart yep put in a new skate park over there by the Green Acres skater die [Music]