Kingsley Air National Guard Base, located in Southern Oregon’s Klamath Falls, is home to America’s only F-15C/D training unit, the 173th Fighter Wing. It is sometimes referred to as “K-Falls,” or more often “the land of no slack” due to the incredibly hard curriculum would-be Eagle Drivers must go through to earn their place in the famous jet’s ejection seat.
The video above is a rare glimpse inside the Eagle’s cockpit, showing dogfighting and the general plying of an Eagle Driver’s deadly trade. After 40 years of service the F-15C/D remains one of the most feared weapons systems flying, and that has as much, if not more, to do with those flying it than the sensors and missiles that it packs into combat. As one 173rd Fight Wing instructor put it to me, “we don’t train pilots, we build Eagle Drivers, and we do it from scratch.”
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