Author Phillip Swarts

The Air Force made another appearance on a superhero TV show Thursday night, the latest time the service has appeared on a comic book based program. The CW’s time-traveling “Legends of Tomorrow” showed their characters needing to break into the Pentagon in the 1980’s, so two of them dressed in uniform to infiltrate Defense Department headquarters – including Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) posing as an Air Force major. The Air Force has also been a bit of an antagonist on the ABC show “Agents of SHIELD.” Brig. Gen. Glenn Talbot (Adrian Pasdar) has butted heads with the SHIELD main characters…

MacDill Air Force Base in Florida would like to remind it’s airmen to leave the drones for Creech. In a post to the base’s website and Facebook pages, it reminded troops that small personal drones that are commercially available are illegal to fly on base grounds. “Are you thinking of buying a drone for the holidays?  You may want to rethink this gift idea,” the post said. “As drones increase in popularity and decrease in price, it may be tempting to purchase a drone as a gift for the holiday season. While it may be fun to own a drone,…

The Air Force’s official blog posted a Top 10 list of myths about Remotely Piloted Aircraft that included a reassurance that RPA technology is not extraterrestrial in origin. “Myth: RPAs are made from alien technology and are flown from area 51. Fact: The U.S. Air Force actually has a long history of unmanned flight and we are still learning new and better ways to fly. We will continue to improve our methods of training, conducting operations and employing new weapon systems,” the blog post reads, adding that Creech Air Force Base in Nevada is the main site of RPA operations, with…

A school kid might have used a test to support the Wounded Warrior Project. In response to a question about the number of legs people have, the child supposedly wrote “Not everyone has two legs. Go to www.woundedwarriorproject.org.” The picture was posted online by Internet star and Star Trek alum George Takei.

A group of aviation enthusiasts is trying to restore a B-29 Superfortress to working order, and has set up a Kickstarter campaign for donations. The non-profit group Doc’s Friends is trying to raise funds to restore the 1945 B-29 known as “Doc,” named for one of the dwarves in Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the group’s website says. “After spending 42 years deteriorating in the western Mojave Desert at the U.S. Naval Weapons Testing Center, B-29 Doc was rescued in 1998 by Tony Mazzolini and an intrepid group of volunteers,” the group’s Kickstarter page says. “Despite initial…

Satirical website Duffel Blog lampooned the F-35s recent troubles with air-to-air combat, saying the fifth generation fighter had been defeated by a World War I Fokker Dr.I tri-plane like the one flown by famous German pilot the Red Baron. “Lockheed officials have separately downplayed reports that the same F-35, flown by the same pilot, previously lost mock dogfights with the Goodyear Blimp and a beagle on a flying doghouse,” said the satirical post published Aug. 31. Duffel Blog’s post comes after a widely-publicized internal Lockheed-Martin memo that was leaked earlier this year. The memo found that when pitted against each other, the…

Polish website Foto Poork claims it has captured the first images of the F-22 Raptors the Air Force deployed to Europe. According to the website, the planes landed at Lask Airbase in Poland, and were joined by several F-16s. The aircraft are to take part in multinational training with Poland and other eastern European NATO allies. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III said the planes were deployed in part to send a warning to Russia about interfering in other nation’s affairs.