Today’s mission was for Cash and I to go up and practice a maneuver we call "The Grease." I have no idea why we call it that. Maybe because someone thought it would be a slick way for us to get to a merge with a Bandit?
Cash and I have been flying F-16s together for a long time. We started as wingmen together at Spangdahlem, and both of us were flight leads at Kunsan. After Kunsan, he went to fly the F-117, while I went to drive a HMMWV. We did a rejoin here at Misawa, both of us with our wives now in tow. Whatever was going to happen today was going to be fun, just because.
And it was! Fun, that is. We took turns being offender/defender, the defender simply had to turn slightly sideways, it’s what we used to call a ‘Notch’ maneuver, except now we have LINK-16, and we can lock up an adversary with that instead of our own radars and find our way to a merge. We’re essentially using AWACS or GCI to show us where we’re being attacked from, and then pointing at them after we’ve dragged off any incoming missiles. As if I needed more proof, I did well enough that I was absolutely sure I flew sideways long enough to get out of Cash’s radar picture (he later confirmed I did), and he still put his nose right on me and "spiked" me with his radar.
We finished off the day with a 6k offensive BFM set for me, but we didn’t get far before we were both low on gas. We safed it up and went home, another 1.4 in our logbooks.