Air to Air Gunnery

Ever wonder how fighter pilots practice shooting down other airplanes?

Well, since airplanes are too expensive to shoot down we have one jet tow a banner and the others roll in and shoot at it.

The first image show what it looks like from a distance.  It really is that hard to see.

Next we get a little closer.  This is about what it looks like just before we start to shoot.  It gets big fast so we only shoot for about half a second.  That's long enough to get 50 20mm bullets into the air.

You can see the how close in size the banner is to one of our F/A-18s.