Col. Gregory Jones surpassed 4,000 flying hours in the F-16 fighter during a training sortie from Luke AFB, Ariz., on Jan. 8. “I’ve been lucky in that I’ve consistently been assigned to jobs that included flying the F-16,” Jones said in a Luke release. He is currently serving as operations group commander of Air Force Reserve Command’s 944th Operations Group at Luke. Jones flew his first F-16 sortie during type conversion training at Luke in 1990. Jones is one of only 42 other F-16 pilots in the Air Force to log more than 4,000 hours in the type, including one other at Luke—also a Reservist—said Col. Kurt Gallegos, commander of AFRC’s 944th Fighter Wing.
Just days after a Defense Intelligence Agency report predicted new ballistic missile testing by North Korea, the Pyongyang regime fired a a submarine-launched ballistic missile which landed in the Sea of Japan. While U.S. Indo-Pacific Command downplayed the test as representing no new threat to the U.S. or regional allies,…