“Mature” fighters—those long since fully developed, and with a logistics train well established—are expected to turn in a mission capable rate of about 70 percent. Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, 94th FS commander, said his Raptors are achieving MC rates of just under that figure … and that includes maintenance on low-observable surfaces, which typically are a headache. Such reliability in a nearly new fighter is unprecedented. In Alaska earlier this year, the goal was to fly every Raptor pilot at least 10 times in mock combat. Smith said that everybody got “12 to 13 times or more.”
No sooner had the Defense Intelligence Agency issued its North Korean Military Power report, in which it predicted Pyongyang would resume ballistic missile tests, than North Korea did exactly that, lofting a submarine-launched ballistic missile Oct. 19. The test, in which an SLBM launched from the port of Sinpo into…