Originally Posted by Vito

Block 30,

Most of the previous posters hit the nail on the head, however one asect of this conversation that is hard to explain to non-mil pilots is the "Mission" I'm positive given enough time any pilot can take-off and land an F-16 C-130 or C-17, however, and this is the part most civilians can't understand, is the military takes it for granted a pilot can take-off, land or fly an IFR approach to minimums, little emphisis is placed on these skills sets, matter of fact after flying 6+ hours in formation, the CAT II approach was easy, not bragging, just trying to explain. What matters to the military and sets the mil pilot apart is accomplishing the mission, whether that be dropping bombs, paratroopers, or shooting down another jet..You would be amazed at how much work, coordination and planning goes into even the most standard missions. add to the mix the possibility of people shooting at you, low-level ops, flying on NVG's, weather, Maintanance issues and the complexity and workload really ramps up. For example as a Airdrop guy, if your leading a 6-ship and the 3rd jet breaks what do you do?? You'll have about ten minutes to figure out a plan and execute it. If you delay the mission to fix it, but if you do the troops on the ground will be waiting, exposed to the enemy for however long you've delayed the mission. Or you can scrub #3 out of the mission but the gunners who will operate the artillery thats on #2 are on #3 so The artillery becomes useless cargo...or if weather causes you to deviate around a system you may miss your rendevous time with the KC-135 tankers, that will pass the fuel to you so you can complete the mission, so do you penetrate a small sytsem and stay on time?? if you do you must send the formation into a different formation in order to penetrate the weather....yada yada yada, as you can see issues escalate and decisions have to be made quickly and be sound...as you can see taking off, and landing are in consequential in the big scheme of things...compound this times 3 to a single seat guy, and you may begin to see the point. There were alot of Civ pilots in my UPT class with hundreds of hours that washed out because they didn'y multi-task, and prioritize as well as others.