From Lone Stars to Allies – NATO fighter pilots train in Texas

The home of a transatlantic training mission

Wichita Falls doesn’t seem like a place that should mean anything to a European fighter pilot. But if you were to ask Jade, a lieutenant in the Belgian Air Force, if she’s ever heard of the place, she might give you a knowing smirk.

It’s where she learned to fly.

The sky over Sheppard Air Force Base thundered as sleek jets knifed through the air, breaking left over the runway in preparation for landing. Home of the US Air Force’s 80th Flying Training Wing, Sheppard owns the busiest airspace in the United States. Planes are constantly landing, taking off or queueing on the long taxiways. A bumper sticker on the back of one car reads: “I Heart Jet Noise.”

The Euro-NATO Joint Jet Pilot Training Program (ENJJPT) has been turning out NATO fighter pilots since 1981, when seven Allies founded the school at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls. Most joint NATO initiatives are based in Europe (where 30 of the 32 NATO member countries are located), but Sheppard was chosen as the ideal location for ENJJPT because of its existing training facilities, year-round good flying weather and the wide-open Texan skies. Today, more than 40 years later, 14 national flags fly outside the squat, brick building that houses ENJJPT’s headquarters, representing the 14 participating NATO Allies: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Inside, Italian pilots saunter through the maze-like corridors, passing groups of Romanians, Norwegians, Spaniards and Danes. In the gear room, Greek instructors put on their flight vests and G-Suits (trousers lined with inflatable air pockets that keep pilots conscious during high-speed turns) and wait for their students. On their way out, they pass groups of Canadian and Turkish students coming back from training sorties, their hair matted with sweat, their faces flushed with victory: it’s another flight down, another step closer to their wings.

Ask one of the European student aviators how they like living in the Lone Star State, and they’ll twist their mouth into a curious smile and say something like: “I like it.” Which might be a polite way of saying: I’m from a small village in Germany and I’ve never heard someone say “yeehaw” before.

Fixin’ to fly – A rigorous training schedule

Not that the students get many chances to sample the local culture. From the moment they arrive at Sheppard and drop their suitcases, their schedules are packed. First stop is “ground school”, where students learn the fundamental science of flight. Then students get fitted for helmets, harnesses and G-suits and climb into their first aircraft, the T-6 Texan II.

With the instructors watching from the backseat, this is where the student aviators take the stick for the first time. They learn how to take off, fly in formation and land, keeping the aircraft on speed and on course. It’s a time of firsts, each with its own tradition: a student’s first flight is called a “Dollar Ride” because students are expected to give their instructors a Silver Dollar coin. After a student’s first solo flight, their classmates haul them off to a nearby pool of water for a well-deserved bath.

From here, some students leave Wichita Falls to learn how to fly multi-engine transport aircraft like the C-130 Hercules. Those destined for fighter jets, however, must conquer the T-38 Talon.

Save a horse, ride a jet plane – training with the Talon

The Talon is skinny as a scalpel, with wings so thin they seem to disappear when viewed head-on. Its long snout slopes up to a bubble canopy, which encloses two ejection seats. It looks fast, and it is; with afterburners lit, it can punch through the sound barrier and send a sonic boom smashing across the north Texas Plains. One Dutch Major, callsign “Homer”, compares it to a ’66 Mustang sports car – fitting, he notes, because the Talon first entered service in the 1960s.

The jet will be replaced in the coming years, but in the meantime it’s still a worthy teacher. Its hydraulic flight controls demand that students pay attention, feeling the jet through the stick and continuously “trimming out” to ensure balanced flight. Its stubby wings are built for maximum speed, not maximum stability, and if the inattentive student bleeds too much speed in a turn, it will fall out of the sky – or, as the instructors prosaically put it, “depart controlled flight.”

When Lieutenant Jade first took off in a Talon, she was used to the T-6 Texan II, and she wasn’t ready for the raw power pumped out by the jet’s two turbojet engines. She had to stand on the brakes to keep the aircraft static as she pushed the throttle to “mil” – full military power. She felt the aircraft tremor as the afterburners lit. When she released the brakes, the jet leapt forward.

“For me, that day was like… I knew I was on the right track,” she said.

Getting back in the saddle

The Talon curriculum is the hardest part of ENJJPT. When students aren’t flying, they’re studying. When they aren’t studying, they’re in the simulator, practising skills like flying in close formation, or the thrill of high-speed, low-level flight. And when they’re not in the simulator, they’re sleeping.

“Sometimes it’s a bit too fast, and I have to catch up,” Jade said. “That’s the biggest struggle I’ve had so far. That gets me feeling down about it, sometimes. But then it’s even more rewarding when you’re able to step up and strive again.”

The students know that success is not guaranteed. Plenty of their peers buckle under the stress and leave the Program to serve out their military commitments elsewhere in their country’s armed forces. But for most, failure is not an option. Washing out would mean turning their back on something that’s called to them all their life.

“Everyone wishes to have an impact on the world,” Jade said. “That’s how I think I can make the biggest impact.”

Earning their wings

If a student proves that they can master the demands of high-speed flight in the Talon, they head towards “Drop Night” – the ceremony where they find out which jet they’re going to fly. For the US Air Force, which operates a variety of fighter, bomber and transport aircraft, the suspense is real. When a student is assigned to their first-pick aircraft, some literally leap with joy and relief.

For Jade, there was little suspense – the Belgian Air Force primarily flies one tactical jet, the F-16 Fighting Falcon multirole fighter, although Belgium is now replacing its F-16 fleet with F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation stealth fighters – but the glee in having passed a demanding curriculum was undiluted. When she “dropped” the F-16, she leapt into the air, pumping her fists before being carried away by her cheering classmates.

Jade has since left Sheppard to learn how to fly the F-16. Eventually, perhaps, she’ll be deployed to eastern Europe, where NATO Allies have significantly increased the number of fighters on standby to respond to airborne threats, part of the NATO Air Policing mission on the Alliance’s eastern flank. Until then, the next generation of aspiring military aviators has already begun training at Sheppard, joining a decades-long tradition of taking to the skies together.