General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon

NATO stood by while cities and towns were shelled, while humanitarian convoys were turned back, while helicopters violated the no-fly zone.

A NATO F-16 was shot out of the sky this summer by Serbs using Russian military hardware.

The administration argues that NATO's credibility is at stake.

But I must ask, what happens if I-4 goes to Bosnia, and after one year and the departure of I-4, the parties return to war? Will NATO be more credible for having gone to Bosnia with great fanfare, but having returned without success, or worse, with casualties we cannot justify? This administration proclaims that this is a chance for peace in Bosnia.

That's Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared Pod aboard an F-18 Super Hornet.

So we used basically the same pod on the F-16 you see behind me here.

And I flew that for 18 years.

We used it all the time, air to air, air to ground.

You look down here, it says black.

That means whatever is black in this case is hot.

And that's a relative scale, right? So there's a little switch on the stick, actually, in the F-16.

And that'll change it from white hot to black hot, white hot to black hot.

But again, but you need, it needs to be rock solid.

I mean, look, nobody's afraid that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, F 16, that the CEO of Lockheed Martin is going to like remote switch, kill all of our F 16s.

Cause he's mad about something.

Right.

Quote, I met in Kiev with a team from American defense company Lockheed Martin, which helps us save lives.

Its Patriot systems and F-16 aircraft play an important role in defending against Russian ballistic missiles.

Things are not easy right now, so on and so forth.

Thank you for the meeting.

He has founded, built, scaled, bought, and sold multiple businesses.

He has testified before the United States House of Representatives, has been trained by F-16 fighter pilots, and continues to fly jets.

And he has completed over 350 podcasts and authored three books.

So today he's here today to share his story and get a little bit more into his background.

What is that? So this took place in the afternoon, just after noon.

An F-16 was deployed by the NORAD Air Defense Command, and it flew right in front of this plane to get the pilot's attention.

I'd say that would get a pilot's attention.

So they call this, when they fly in front of a plane like that, the headbutt maneuver.

So I want you to just try to picture this for a second.

Imagine you're strapped into the ejection seat of a supersonic F-16 fighter jet.

Which is an intense place to be already, right?

Absolutely.

The threat matrix immediately shifts from a communications failure to a potential hostile hijacking.

The Hellenic Armed Forces Command doesn't hesitate.

At 11.05, two F-16 fighter jets are scrambled.

They go to full afterburner, tearing through the sky to intercept the Rogue 737.

I think that solution is coming.

The challenge is that right now, Ukraine is having to rely heavily on its fleet of F-16 fighter jets to deal with these threats, as well as the cruise missiles, including the cheap ones like Bandarol, as well as the more exquisite legacy missiles like Kh-101, Caliber, etc., So, you know, right now the Ukrainians are probably shooting down somewhere around, you know, 55, 60 percent of Garand 4s and 5s compared to over 90 percent of Garand 2s.

And so that Russia is using these munitions to really hammer Ukrainian energy infrastructure, grain exports, shipping, et cetera, really a full court press on the Ukrainian economy and civilian life.

And a big challenge right now, in addition to the interceptor drones, is that Ukraine's is that their F-16s are just really overworked and over half of them are sitting in a maintenance backlog in Belgium where they go for kind of deeper maintenance.

So the throughput just isn't there.

And so the fleet has been kind of dwindling, hamstringing Ukraine's ability to deal with this threat.