The US military has a system established to sell military hardware and software to other countries when it's in the best interest of the United States. This system is called Foreign Military Sales or FMS for short. Of course provided a country is not going to use the military equipment for evil or something the US doesn't agree with, then chances are they will sell the items to that country.

To help the process along an organization called DISAM (Defence Institute of Security Assistance Management) runs a course on everything to do with FMS for people from these countries who will be involved in FMS in some capacity. Well they don't teach everything (that would take years) but they do give a good overview of the system in a three week course at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.

In March 2007 we headed to Dayton so that Adam could attend this course. Of the 29 students on course, I think 23 countries were represented. There were students on course from Singapore, Greece, Poland, Chile, Norway, Denmark, Fiji, Botswana and Algeria to name just a few. Over the three weeks we all become very good friends and there are still e-mails being exchanged between all course members to this day.

The course was a great opportunity for us to firstly learn about FMS but probably more importantly, to learn about the countries that our course mates were from. Many beers and karaoke songs were shared to help this process along and it was certainly a great experience for both of us. The course members welcomed Carol to all the events that we attended outside of school hours, which was fantastic.

During the final week the course put on course picnic for us to relax outside the classroom. The US military bases have a great welfare system established for both current serving and retired military to use for social activities and to just get away. Where the picnic was held was a dam stocked with fish for those enthusiastic fisherman, as well as an area to park an RV. I guess it's sort of like a mini caravan park. Not a bad set up.

 

Wright Brothers

The Wright Brothers were from Dayton, Ohio and as part of the course we stopped by the memorial that had been erected in their honor. Seeing that we'd been to Kittyhawk and also seen the Wright Flyer in the Smithsonian, it was fitting that we also saw the memorial the town had established. This memorial overlooked the Air Force base.

   

 

Air Force Museum

Like everything in the US, any museum or display typically is big and the US Air Force Museum is no different. This thing is huge and definitely worth a look if you're in the area. I think they have just about every type of aircraft that the US Air Force has flown since flying began, plus a few more. I could have spent hours there and though Carol probably will never admit it, I think she actually enjoyed looking at some of the various aircraft.

B-29 called Bockscar. It drop the Fat Man atomic bomb on Nagasaki three days after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.		Mustang - certainly the Ferrai of the air		Carol in front of a P40 Kittyhawk
	Carol under a B-1 bomber.	F-117 stealth aircraft	B2 bomber tucked in with all the other aircraft on display	The B707 used as Air Force One
	XB-70 Valkyrie - an absolutely massive bomber aircraft capable of flying at 3 times the speed of sound. It has 6 afterburning engines	Carol and fellow Australian course mate Melisa standing next to the nose wheel of the Valkyrie. Only two were built but never went into production