Air Force Fights Feathered Foes

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Air Force Fights Feathered Foes
Associated Press | January 04, 2008

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - Flying an F-15E Eagle fighter may be the sexiest job the military has to offer.

The least sexy may be bagging up the beaks, talons and feathers smeared on the jet's exterior when an Eagle hits a sparrow at 500 miles per hour.

Lt. Col. Del Johnson does both. His day job is firing up the afterburners and flying combat missions out of Bagram, the main U.S. air base in Afghanistan. But as flight safety officer, his duties also include making sure that every time war bird and regular bird collide, the latter is scraped off the former and shipped to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution.

"It's not as glamorous a job as you might imagine," says Col. Johnson, a 38-year-old Kansan with a Top Gun grin and a 9mm pistol strapped to his shoulder.

A bird, even a small one, can bring down a $38 million F-15E fighter if it flies into the air intake and breaks the engine's turbine blades. A goose can smash through the canopy and do grievous injury to the two-man crew. Col. Johnson, for his part, once hit a vulture while flying at 500 feet above North Carolina. "I just saw a black bird," recalls the colonel, who landed safely. At 550 miles per hour, he says, "things go by pretty fast."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,159379,00.html