Watch the heat distortion and tip vortices generated by an EA-18G Growler landing at Nellis AFB

January 31, 2016 Military Aviation

David Cenciotti

Red Flag 16-1 underway at Nellis Air Force Base, near Las Vegas.

With RF16-1 underway, cool images and footage showing Red Flag participants taking off and recovering to Nellis have started to pop up.

Here’s an interesting one, filmed by Dave Stein, showing a VAQ-138 EA-18G Growler on base turn for final: take a look at the heat distortion and wingtip vortices highlighted by the desert mountains in the background.

About David Cenciotti

David Cenciotti is a freelance journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.

Marco says:

February 4, 2016 at 10:20 AM

In the ongoing discussion about how effective that S-400 deployed in Syria is, I can see that this is that kind of “un-cool” plane that no one considers while it makes the difference in the battle-space.