7/8/2023 0 Comments Come and take a ride true game![]() The first time you rip around at 500 feet pulling 7 Gs is an eye-opening experience. "The secret to TOPGUN's success is unrelentingly high standards and the opportunity to gain experience at elite levels of training. "This constant demand for excellence spanned all phases of flight: preparation, effective flight briefing, mission execution and debriefing," says Snodgrass, who now is CEO of Defense Analytics, a national security and foreign policy advisory firm. ![]() He's a 2006 TOPGUN graduate who became an instructor at the school for three years and wrote a 2020 book, " TOPGUN'S Top 10: Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit," about what he learned at TOPGUN that is transferrable to other endeavors. "TOPGUN pushed me to expand the envelope of my abilities, resulting in a much higher level of competence after departing the staff as an instructor," explains Guy M. "The way we look at it is if they've got the passion and they've got the ability, we're going to make them better." Sheer talent as a pilot actually ranks third, according to Papaioanu. Instead, the program favors "somebody who is humble, who can go do an event, makes a big comeback, recognize that they've made some mistakes, and be willing to critique themselves or allow us as instructors to make them better." "If they come in confident, overconfident and cocky, that's not like a personality that you can make better, right?" Papaioanu says. While Hollywood might make brash overconfidence seem like a prerequisite, TOPGUN actually is looking for the opposite sort of temperament. The second most important qualification is having the right personality. They have to be passionate about being good in the airplane, they have to be passionate about instructing, they have to be passionate about doing this job." "We're looking for three things," Papaioanu says. And some are offered a chance to become instructors at TOPGUN itself. Graduates often go on to become instructors at the Navy's weapons schools, but they also help develop operational testing for new aircraft under development by putting them into tactical scenarios that show whether a fighter jet is capable of what it's supposed to do. In the second, students learn (via simulators) how to operate their sensors and provide the SFTIs with situational awareness to help guide their decision-making. In the first, some TOPGUN pilots learn to replicate the capacity and tactics used by other countries, so they can play the part of enemy fliers more realistically in Navy training exercises. In addition to the strike fighter tactics instructors (SFTIs) course, the one that's depicted in the movies, there are two nine-week courses. ![]() To achieve that purpose, students at TOPGUN take one of three courses, according to Papaioanu. "The best way to describe the ultimate purpose of TOPGUN is to ensure that Naval aviation is trained and ready, and has the tactics required to win in combat against any adversary, at any time," explains Commander Christopher "Pops" Papaioanu, a veteran Navy pilot and TOPGUN alumnus who served as the school's commanding officer in 2018-19. Department of Defense's website about the program. TOPGUN aims to elevate the games of elite Navy fighter pilots, so they can go out as teachers and pass along state-of-the-art skills and knowledge to other Navy aviators, thus raising everyone else's tactical performance, according to the U.S. ![]() While the location, the aircraft and the technology have changed over the years, the mission is essentially the same.
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