There is a good and sane reason I do not fly in military aircraft. They scare me. I can support them or the men that fly them. But don't ask me to do a walk around or sit in one.
/johnny
The crew on the Buff was VERY experienced, but the 135 had a young guy. It was a hot mid-day departure scheduled, we got to ops & he ran the numbers, said "holy shit", and called the command post and said we were too heavy to get off the ground and needed to offload some fuel. Command post said we could make it, so he had us hurry out and start engines to burn fuel before takeoff. Ran thru checklists several times, admitted he was looking for something wrong...eventually decided the wing trim tab actuators were working slow, so shut 'em down & get maintenance out (hoping the delay would allow the afternoon to cool down providing more thrust).
Well, the wing panels are off, guys swarming it, & I'm standing on the ramp in a jump suit with no rank on it, picking my nose and watching aF-117 takeoff, when a bird Col comes up, stares me in the eye and says "What's your rank mister?". I calmly looked him in the eye and said GS-14....what's yours?
He was taken aback for a moment, then said "Oh--you're the FAA guy". I admitted I were, he invited me in the command post to cool down, have a drink and wait for repairs.
When we finally took off I was really glad the pilot was a chicken, cuz I got a REAL good look at the over-run area....counting rosary beads.