In a not-so-subtle full battle-rattle feather-flash toward North Korea, a flock of U.S. F-16s readies for war in full nose-to-tail “elephant walk” mode at South Korea’s Kusan air base. “What we’ve done today is essentially generated aircraft for combat exactly as we would do in war time,” Col. Craig Leavitt, an operations group commander, told the Air Force press service about the Dec. 2 exercise. It took 1,300 people to get the planes to the runway. The Vipers, fully bomb-laden, did everything…except take off.
