Thomas Newdick interviews Colonel R Scott Jobe, the commander of the 35th Fighter Wing at Misawa Air Base, Japan, and learns how the wing’s two F-16 squadrons prepare for their demanding mission in the turbulent Indo-Asia-Pacific region.
35th Fighter Wing
A former F-4 Phantom II operator at George Air Force Base, California, the 35th Tactical Fighter Wing was inactivated on December 15, 1992. The wing was briefly reactivated at Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland, from where it secured the North Atlantic region with F-15C/D Eagles, before being inactivated again on September 30, 1994. A day later, it was resurrected as the 35th Fighter Wing (FW) at Misawa Air Base, where it assumed the missions and responsibilities previously performed by the 432nd FW. It also took the radio call ‘Magnum’ – the code word for an anti-radar missile shot.
Today, the 35th FW’s two squadrons of F-16s both focus on the SEAD or ‘Wild Weasel’ role. The 13th Fighter Squadron (FS) ‘Panthers’ and the 14th FS ‘Samurais’ are each assigned the Block 50 version of the F-16, designed with the ‘Weasel’ mission in mind.
There is little in the way of day-to-day differences between the work of the two squadrons, as Colonel R Scott Jobe, t…