F16 FIGHTER JETS TRAINING ABOVE NEILLSVILLE
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2005 -- 6:15 AM
If you live in the Neillsville area, you?ve probably heard the military jets flying over lately. The United State Air Force will be conducting F-16 fighter jet training through this Friday. Brian Tatum is a joint tactical air controller with the Air Force."We spot targets on the ground and we bring them in - talk them onto the target and tell them where to drop their bombs," Tatum says. For instance, the Neillsville school is one of the targets that has bombarded by fake bombs over the last couple weeks.
If you get a chance to watch the jets, you?ll notice they fly low and they periodically shoot off flares. In a combat situation, those flares would confuse the enemies heat-seeking missiles.
"When they go in to drop they bomb, they go in low. The expose their heat index to the ground," Tatum explains. "If there's any surface-to-air missiles that are attracted to heat - they shoot those flares off to set off other heat signatures so it doesn't attack their engine."
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