Photo: USAF/Senior Airman Zachary Rufus
Although influenced by a variety of factors, Earth’s curvature is generally visible once you get about 35,000 feet (10.670 meters) high. That’s the cruising altitude of most long-haul commercial airplanes currently in operation, hence a vista many of us get to enjoy on a daily basis.
Although fully capable, military planes do not get to that distance all that much. The F-16 Fighting Falcon, for instance, has a ceiling of much more than that, 50,000 feet (15,000 meters), but it seldom needs to go that high.
One of them seems to be flying quite high though in the latest entry in our Photo of the Day coverage, a pic released recently by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and showing an F-16 during a flight conducted back in mid-August.
The Falcon is deployed with the 64th Aggressor Squadron, a unit that is in the business of playing the bad guys in pilot training exercises. We see it here during what the USAF calls a routine training mission, which took place over the Nevada Test and Training Range.
We’re not told how high the airplane was when the pic was taken, but it clearly flies over the cloud ceiling, and if you look out in the distance, there are even hints of the Earth’s curvature. And that’s a rare sight even for us, who have been covering USAF gear in action for quite some time now.
As for the 64th Aggressor Squadron, the unit is the main tool the USAF uses to train its pilots how to fight “professional adversary force” equipped with similar hardware flown by the good guys.
The main goal of the unit is to train America’s pilots to respond, act and react when faced with equally skilled and weaponized adversaries – a thing that rarely happens in real life, but one never knows, given the current state of affairs in the world.
One of them seems to be flying quite high though in the latest entry in our Photo of the Day coverage, a pic released recently by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) and showing an F-16 during a flight conducted back in mid-August.
The Falcon is deployed with the 64th Aggressor Squadron, a unit that is in the business of playing the bad guys in pilot training exercises. We see it here during what the USAF calls a routine training mission, which took place over the Nevada Test and Training Range.
We’re not told how high the airplane was when the pic was taken, but it clearly flies over the cloud ceiling, and if you look out in the distance, there are even hints of the Earth’s curvature. And that’s a rare sight even for us, who have been covering USAF gear in action for quite some time now.
As for the 64th Aggressor Squadron, the unit is the main tool the USAF uses to train its pilots how to fight “professional adversary force” equipped with similar hardware flown by the good guys.
The main goal of the unit is to train America’s pilots to respond, act and react when faced with equally skilled and weaponized adversaries – a thing that rarely happens in real life, but one never knows, given the current state of affairs in the world.
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