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F-15 Eagle Buzzes Parked Raptors, Because What Can Be Cooler

Back in 1986, Tom Cruise’s first Top Gun took the world by storm by giving us a glimpse into the lives of U.S. Navy pilots. It made famous or popular planes, maneuvers, actors, and even some military expressions, like “buzz the tower.”
F-15 Eagle flying over Raports 19 photos
Photo: USAF/Tech. Sgt. Morgan Whitehouse
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The maneuver, which you can check in the video attached below as seen in Top Gun, calls for pilots to fly really close to the control tower. It’s being done with the intent to both scare those in the tower and show off the pilots’ skills, and even if it probably isn’t as dramatic as making people spill their coffee, it probably is pretty uncomfortable for the ones at the receiving end.

Buzzing can be done to a variety of targets, though, not only towers, and we sometimes get to experience that at air shows. Pilots probably like to do it on a constant basis during their training too, as clearly demonstrated by the main image of this piece.

On the deck of the Air Dominance Center at the Savannah Air National Guard Base in Georgia, several F-22s and some maintenance crews were minding their own business when not that high up an F-15 Eagle, deployed with the 125th Fighter Wing, Florida Air National Guard, comes around, banking hard to the right to make sure everyone feels it passing by.

Now, in all honesty, such instances are probably pretty common on an air base, especially during a training exercise (the pic was snapped during exercise Sentry Savannah 22-1 held back in May), but that doesn’t make them any less cool to watch (and of course a lot more so to experience first hand).

Sentry Savannah saw no less than ten units of fourth and fifth-generation fighter aircraft go against each other “in a simulated near-peer environment” to train “next generation of fighter pilots for tomorrow’s fight.”

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Editor's note: Gallery shows various F-15s.

About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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