WESTFIELD – The 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes Air National Guard Base, Westfield Mass., will be executing hot pit refueling training October 25-27, 2016.
We do not want to alarm the residents in the local area who may be startled by the increase noise around the airfield. In order to increase the safety and efficiency on a limited number of sorties, 104th Fighter Wing aircraft may occasionally takeoff opposite to standard noise abatement procedures.
These sorties will remain a very low percentage of all sorties flown.
This training will include F-15 aircraft scheduled to take off and land in a non-standard direction to increase safety and efficiency when doing Hot Pits. Hot Pit training is rarely conducted and when accomplished it is with reduced number of aircraft.
Hot Pit refueling allows aircraft to rapidly launch after refueling and is a common practice throughout the Air Force. The training equips fuel technicians, crew chiefs, and pilots with the necessary preparations for war time taskings along with other various time-sensitive missions required to defend our nation.
The rapid refuels allow the aircraft to be refueled while the engines are running and thrusts the aircraft back into the fight with a rapid response to answer our nation’s call.
The F-15 can hold close to 23,000 pounds or 1600 gallons of fuel in its tank, this procedure gets an aircraft refueled in as few as 5 minutes and the whole process complete within 15 minutes.
