Not many people get to cruise and do loop de loops in an F-16, what Aaron Needs A Job star Aaron Kaufman calls “the Ferrari of the sky”.
Formerly a Fast N’ Loud star, Aaron Kaufman has a new show and a new outlook well beyond the grease monkey life. In fact, you could say he’s a shooting star these days, at least in his latest episode of Aaron Needs A Job.
In our exclusive clip, we see Aaron take to the skies as he achieves his childhood dream of getting to pilot an F-16 fighter jet.
We can clearly see that Aaron is like a kid in a candy shop. He says: “This is a childhood dream come true… it’s an adult dream come true, this is wild! I can’t believe people get paid to do this!”
The men board a jet engine that’s been mothballed and brought back to life in the hush house. He says: “But now that I’m strapped into that 28,000 pounds of thrust we’ll see what happens when we kick the tires and light the fire.”
Immediately upon takeoff, Aaron can feel the awesome power of the jet.
He adds: “The F-16 can go 2,000 miles on a single tank of fuel and it has one of the best maneuverability and combat ranges of any fighter jet on earth. That’s why it’s known as the Ferrari of the skies…The pilots use these exercises to sharpen their dogfighting skills.”
Aaron gets to use the equipment in the plane and he flies with his pilot in tandem maneuvers and rips up the sky. “Man this is so intense,” he says.
What’s so special about an F-16?
According to Military Machine, the F-16 is the badass of the sky every country wants to own.
The F-16 is on the shopping and bought lists of 28 militaries with a total of 2,691 aircraft on the planet according to the website, making it the most prolific jet fighter in the world. Only the Sikorsky UH-60 military helicopter comes near it for popularity and numbers sold.
The F-16 came to be around the 1991 Desert Storm war. It was made specifically for Operation Desert Storm, and Military Machine writes: “249 US Air Force F-16s flew 13,340 sorties to engage enemy targets. These missions were varied, but frequently involved engaging ground targets within Iraq or fighting it out with Iraqi aircraft in the skies above.”
On September 11th, 2001, that awful day saw F-16’s called to intercept the hijacked commuter planes. They were dispatched from Andrews AFB and had pilots Col. Marc Sasseville and Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penny given the mission to “take out” flight United 93 using all they had – their aircraft. The people on board this doomed flight knew what was going on and they bravely attacked the hijackers and the plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
Later in the same episode, Aaron explores a scrapyard where he learns how to rip up, crush, and shred old vehicles for fun and profit. After Aaron takes on the world of recycled tires.
Aaron Needs A Job at airs Mondays at 10/9c on Discovery.