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And fighter pilots don’t like to wait. I was told that they get very good at quickly lining up with the KC-135’s belly-mounted Pilot Director Lights (PDLs), and expect immediate service!The actual fueling is anevent to behold. Even the relatively-small F-16 fills the entire sighting window. This is the ultimate in close- formation flying. When the boom nozzle securely engages, positive indications are displayed in both airplanes. Fuel can now be safely transferred. Then, almost immediately after being fueled, the F-16 disconnects, and, in our case, launches a battery of high-temperature flares, a demonstration of the airplane’s decoy anti-missile defense against heat-seeking missiles. Spectacular!Once on the ground, I asked Major Rissacher what the future held for the KC-135 and F-16. Officially, the Air Force has stated that many KC-135s could fly well into the 2030s and beyond. As for the F-16, Rissacher thinks its days are numbered. “The F-16s Vermont has were built in the mid-80s and have around 6,000 hours on them (long past the lifespan they were designed for). The United States isn’t buying any more. The Vermont Air National Guard is designated as the second F-35A unit, giving our skilled airmen the airframe we need to thriveand survive for the foreseeable future.” In Rissacher’s world, the word “survive” means survive as a pilot. “The F-16 is a very capable aircraft, able to perform just about any mission. However, some of these missions assume some of us will be shot down. TheF-35A makes it much more likely that the pilots will return to their families and those same pilots/aircraft are around to fly the next mission.”As for the KC-135, it has already significantly exceeded the original design life Boeing specified. The airplane has outlived many of its customers, including F-100, F-104, F-105, B-58, F-4, SR-71, F-117 and many others. It remains ready to service the next generation of fighters and bombers, most notably the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. While there are new modern refuelers in the works, including the KC-46 based on the Boeing 767, I would not be surprised to see the venerable KC-135 playing an important role for many years to come. Referring to Boeing’s 1956 design•, Joe Patroni, the fictional all- knowing cigar-smoking mechanic in the iconic movie “Airport”, famously said, “Take the wings off this and you could use it as a TANK! This plane is built to withstand anything.” And so it has. T&TB/E Aerospace, Inc. Half Page4/C Ad12 • TWIN & TURBINENOVEMBER 2015