Attractions include demonstration flights, displays of advanced jet fighters, helicopters, drone aircraft
Eielson Air Force Base will present its biennial airshow this weekend. And besides the usual attractions, the 2023 Arctic Lightning Airshow also will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the U.S. military expanding the role of women in military aviation.
Eielson will showcase the F-35 during Saturday and Sunday airshows, along with many other aircraft, including the venerable F-16.
Among the events, “We are expecting the F-16 Pacific Air Forces Demo Team and the U.S. Special Operations Command paracommandos,” says Senior Airman Jose Tamondong, an Eielson spokesperson.
Some of the demonstrations will be performed after the airshow kicks off at noon, Tamondong said. But the main attraction will be presented near the conclusion of shows, which are scheduled to wind up at 4 p.m.
“At the end of the show,” he said, “we’re actually going to have the U.S. Air Force Air Combat Command F-35 Demo Team, which is led by Major Kristin “BEO” Wolfe.”
That’s not really her middle name. Tamondong says BEO is actually Major Wolfe’s call sign, a sort of nickname that’s given to pilots, often as a play on words to give their name a double meaning. In this case, perhaps as a reference to the medieval Scandanavian warrior.
Tribute to military women pilots
“The 2023 Arctic Lightning Airshow will include air and ground performances celebrating the 50-year anniversary of women in military air power,” he said.
Another Eielson spokesperson, Airman 1st Class Ricardo Sandoval, added: “We’re pretty much commemorating the fact that the Navy accepted its first eight women into their military aviation program.”
Sandoval says six of those trainees went on to earn their Naval Aviator Badge.
The Army opened its military aviation program to women in 1974, and the Air Force and Coast Guard both followed two years later.
Prior to that, the military restricted the types of aircraft and missions these women aviators could fly, according to a historical account by Marcelyn Atwood, a retired Air Force colonel.
“In the first two decades (1973-1993), women were flying test planes, becoming astronauts, serving on training carriers as ship crew, training pilots to fly, flying airborne surveillance and reconnaissance,” Atwood wrote.
“It wasn’t until the 1991 Persian Gulf War … that the edge between the front combat lines and the back combat support areas blurred in an undeniable way,” she wrote. “Women were in the fight if they were close enough to be shot out of the sky.
“In April 1993, after an exhaustive 2-year study on women in combat, the Department of Defense changed the policy allowing women aviators to fly combat missions,” Atwood wrote.
Aviation displays and other airshow attractions
Besides the acts of aerial derring-do, Air Force and Army aviators will jointly present a demonstration featuring fixed- and rotor-wing aircraft, including F-22 Raptors, and UH-64 Chinook and UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters.
The airshow also will feature displays of aircraft parked along the flightline and elsewhere, along with hardware like three types of surface-to-air missile systems. Other presenters include the Civil Air Patrol and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. And the UAF Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration will provide displays of its many drone aircraft. An Army MQ-1C Grey Eagle drone also will be on display.
The event is free and open to the public. Gates open at 10 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. And on Friday, military ID card-holders can come on base to watch servicemembers rehearse for the show.
Motorists who will be passing-by Eielson on those days should be prepared for brief stops, as traffic will be halted during some of the aerial performances, for safety.
