FLUG!

Some of you may be wondering what's going on in the world of James. Starting in August, he spent five weeks in Alaska doing a couple of big training exercises. Because they have so much open, unrestricted airspace up there, it's one of the only places the AF can go to practice dog fighting with lots of jets up in the air all at once. They also practice dropping live munitions which I know the guys get excited about.

James is at the point in his career where it's expected that he will move on from being a lowly wingman and train to be a flight lead. The difference is one of responsibility. Seems self-explanitory, but instead of just following someone else's lead, the flight leader plans and leads the mission. He or she is also tasked with briefing and debriefing the other pilots in the sortie. That alone takes a great amount of skill - to concisely and accurately communicate a huge amount of information in only an hour or two.

Getting a Flight Lead UpGrade (FLUG) slot is very competitive because we have so few Instructor Pilots to teach and evaluate those in the upgrade. We tried not to get our hopes up too much, but were very encouraged when several people came up to James in Alaska and said they'd heard the commanders talking about starting him on the FLUG as soon as he returned to Misawa.

So you can imagine our shock and disappointment when it was announced right before they flew home that he was passed over for this upgrade. It was not only a disappointment, but pushing that back could have messed with the rest of his career. We know that the guys will be deploying again sometime this spring, but don't know exactly when or where. So if they waited to start him till after the New Year and then they deployed in March to a place where he could not continue his upgrade - it would mean he'd be stuck as a wingman for another 6-8 months, then he would sort of have to start over again when they got back. The danger would be to leave Misawa without progressing nearly as far as he wanted to, and have that affect our next assignment. It also messed up our pre-deployment vacation plans and lots of other things.

That was a pretty dark couple of days. Aside from being disappointed, I think it shook his confidence a bit. Thankfully we have some incredible friends who were very encouraging and made sure we didn't get too down on ourselves. After all, this is very common in the F-16 community, and James is much younger and less experienced than most of the guys in the squadron so they are a higher priority because they're really running out of time.

This was a great time of growth for us. My first impulse would have been to fight for my husband and do everything in my power to convince people why he was so much more qualified and deserving than the other guys who were put through. But I knew that was absolutely NOT the right thing to do. So before I called a friend to vent, I did what I always tell my students to do: I took it to God. I had no idea how to help James so I did a topical Bible search on passages concerning trusting in God's timing and staying the course even when we feel angry or betrayed, and it was so helpful. We decided to try our best to show Christ through our response to this situation and not to let it affect any relationships in the squadron. After all, it's no one's fault. I think God used this to help James figure out how to stay joyful at all times and shine for Christ in the midst of a period of low morale in the squadron.

Immediately, we saw how God blessed us when we trusted Him instead of forcing our own way. So many people came to James and offered their support and helped him start preparing for whenever he did start the FLUG. We also had a few open weekends to explore more of Japan before his schedule got super busy with exercises and an upgrade.

Now, I know that James is extra thankful for those few weeks of preparation. Bast week the squadron leadership surprised us by announcing they were going to start James' FLUG immediately. One of the pilots who were chosen in September fell ill and will not be flying for another few weeks, so they have enough time and resources to get him started.

The last week has been crazy. James is so happy and has spent every waking hour studying and practicing his briefing techniques. (I often catch him moving his hands like two planes in formation as he's mentally going through a briefing, or drawing on our sliding glass doors as he's practicing drawing out his plans. haha.)

Pleased to report that he passed his first ride today! The commander even said his performance was "above average" - which is the highest praise you will ever receive in the pilot community. I am so proud of him! It's been a hard adjustment for me - getting used to him going in and working for 14 hours on a Saturday - but hopefully it will all be worth it in the end!