00:00Hour 9.
00:01The Atlantic is a black sheet under the wing,
00:05and your lower back has stopped sending polite signals
00:08and started sending demands.
00:12Somewhere ahead in the dark,
00:14a tanker is waiting to hand you fuel.
00:17Behind you is the last runway you will see for a long time.
00:22And you are sitting on a seat built for one violent job,
00:27getting you out of a dying aircraft in a fraction of a second.
00:32Carrying you across an ocean was never in the brief.
00:37Billy Flynn has made this crossing 15 times in a fighter.
00:42He says engineering gets the jet across the water,
00:46but it takes discipline to stay sharp in that seat for 10 hours.
00:51So how does a person eat, drink and stay sharp
00:56in a machine with no bathroom?
01:00Flynn is a retired Lieutenant-Colonel of the Royal Canadian Air Force,
01:05and he flew those crossings in the CF-18, the F-16 and the F-35.
01:13His account of one winter ferry flight to Finland
01:17is the clearest picture of this job I could find.
01:21Two F-35s left the US East Coast
01:25and flew over Greenland and Iceland toward Finland,
01:3010 hours in the air.
01:32A fighter burns fuel like a bonfire,
01:36so the whole trip was built around tankers,
01:39and Flynn describes meeting one every 20 to 30 minutes.
01:44And the write-up of the mission counts 16 refuelings each way.
01:50Each way.
01:52A week later, after flying hard test missions in Finland,
01:57he did it all again, going home.
02:0110 hours is routine for this job.
02:04When Italy sent its first F-35 across the Atlantic in February 2016,
02:11the crossing took 11 hours in the air,
02:15split into two legs with a stop in the Azores.
02:19Seven refuelings, a weather delay and headwinds that hit 120 knots.
02:26Nobody got to pull over.
02:30So the problem fits in a sentence.
02:34A human has to function for 10 hours or more in a space the size of a closet,
02:39with a tanker waiting every half hour,
02:43and the nearest toilet sits on the ground somewhere past a coastline he cannot see.
02:49Start with the seat, because everything else is built on top of it.
02:54An ejection seat is shaped to fire you clear of the airframe, and it does that well.
03:01Flynn puts the long-haul version simply.
03:03Strapped into one for 10 hours, you can't move much.
03:08So you move in small ways.
03:11You shift a hip.
03:12You clench a calf.
03:14You roll your shoulders against the harness and feel the survival gear press into your ribs.
03:22Anyone who has sat in a car for six hours knows where the lower back goes next.
03:27You are on hour 10.
03:30On an airliner, you would unbuckle, stand and walk to the back.
03:36Here, there is no aisle.
03:39Your whole world is the width of your shoulders,
03:42and the distance from the canopy to your knees.
03:46And you stay inside it until a runway shows up.
03:51There is the gear too.
03:53A flight suit, a harness, a survival vest,
03:57and a mask that stays on your face for the whole trip.
04:02Small discomforts that you would ignore for an hour
04:06become the loudest thing in your head by the sixth.
04:10The answer is mostly mental.
04:13You decide the discomfort is noise, and you keep flying.
04:18Food comes next, and the rules are strict.
04:24Laurie Horne, a retired CF-18 squadron commander,
04:29says Canadian pilots on long missions load the cockpit with fruit juice and plenty of food.
04:37And the reason is the set-up.
04:39You have one free hand, a mask on your face, and no table.
04:46A burger is out.
04:49Anything that crumbles, drips, or needs two hands stays on the ground.
04:56Period.
04:58Small and tidy.
05:00That is the menu.
05:02The timing belongs to the tanker.
05:05If Flynn is lining up behind one every 20 to 30 minutes,
05:10then any eating happens in the gaps between contacts.
05:15A bite.
05:16A swallow of juice.
05:18Eyes back on the instruments before the next tanker call.
05:23Because the schedule does not bend for lunch.
05:26You eat the way you fly this leg, in small, careful pieces.
05:31And you stop the moment the work needs you.
05:36Then there is the water.
05:38And the water is a trap.
05:41The obvious plan for avoiding the bag is to drink nothing.
05:45The Air Force itself says some pilots do exactly that.
05:50Women especially.
05:52Because the gear was designed around men.
05:55And the alternatives were bad.
05:57Some go dangerously long without urinating.
06:01Or live with dehydration instead.
06:04Dehydration costs you.
06:06It lowers your tolerance for G-forces.
06:09Brings on headaches and altered vision.
06:12And drags down physical and mental performance.
06:16That is a poor trade when the tenth hour is the one where you need your head most.
06:22Look at the logic of that choice.
06:24Drink less and the bag stays unused.
06:27And the problem seems solved.
06:30But the body keeps the debt.
06:33You trade a small embarrassment for a quiet loss of performance.
06:38And the loss arrives at the worst hour.
06:41So water is not a comfort item.
06:44It is part of the equipment that keeps the brain working.
06:48Geoff Devlin, a former Marine FA-18 pilot, says most pilots can hold it through a mission of four or
06:57five hours.
06:58Past that, you reach for a relief device.
07:02What that looks like in a seat you can't leave is the part everybody asks about.
07:08And I will get to it.
07:10First, the tanker.
07:12Because the tanker is the reason the bag has to wait.
07:15An F-22 can't cover the roughly 3,600 miles of the crossing on its own fuel.
07:24It needs a tanker at least twice.
07:28Flynn's F-35s needed far more.
07:31Getting that fuel means flying formation with a much bigger aircraft at the same speed and altitude within about 100
07:40feet for several minutes while the fuel flows.
07:45Flynn calls those refuelings both a lifeline and a hazard.
07:50Now put that in context.
07:52He did it in February over Arctic water.
07:56And he did it 16 times in one crossing.
08:01The first contact of the day is flown by a rested person.
08:05The 16th is flown by someone who has been sitting in one position for nine hours.
08:11His hands remember the procedure.
08:15What fades is judgement.
08:18The half second decision about whether to stay in or back off.
08:23And a refueling gives no credit for being tired.
08:27Then the tanker peels away and the ocean comes back.
08:32Over the middle of the Atlantic at night there are no towns to look at.
08:37No roads.
08:38No ground to tell you how fast you are moving.
08:42There is the hum of the engine.
08:44The sound of your own breathing inside the mask.
08:48And the slow pull of boredom.
08:51Boredom sounds harmless.
08:53Around hour eight it is one of the things you are fighting.
08:58Because a mind with nothing to chew on starts to drift.
09:02And a drifting mind in a fighter is a problem the tanker cannot fix.
09:08Pilots fill the gaps with checks, fuel math, a scan of the instruments
09:13and anything else that keeps the brain working through the long dark stretches between contacts.
09:20The routine is the stimulant.
09:24The first offence is dull.
09:26And it is caffeine.
09:28The US services recommend it ahead of any pill.
09:32And they ban most dietary supplements for flight crew.
09:36Energy drinks included.
09:38A pilot hoping a can of something will carry him across the Atlantic is out of luck.
09:45When caffeine and discipline are not enough,
09:48there is the thing the Air Force actually has a name for.
09:52Go pills.
09:53They are prescription stimulants.
09:56Either dextroamphetamine, the drug sold as dexedrine, or modafinil.
10:01A flight surgeon hands them out.
10:03And only after the pilot has tried them on the ground to see how his body reacts.
10:09Use is voluntary.
10:11And Air Force guidance, quoted in 2003 reporting, said go pills should normally be reserved for single-pilot fighter sorties
10:20longer than eight hours.
10:22And they come paired with sleep aids called no-go pills for afterward.
10:28The history is less tidy than the guidance.
10:32In 2002, two Air National Guard F-16 pilots over Afghanistan bombed a group of Canadian soldiers and Canadian soldiers
10:43died.
10:43The pilots' lawyers argued the go pills had clouded their judgment.
10:49The Air Force Board found the pilots had been ground tested and cleared, had managed their rest, and knew what
10:57they were doing.
10:58Where you land on that depends on whom you ask.
11:01The problem the pills exist to solve is not in dispute.
11:06Some missions run longer than a rested human can safely stay sharp.
11:11Notice what the argument was never about.
11:14Nobody claimed a pilot can fly ten hours on willpower alone.
11:19The dispute was over how to manage a limit everyone accepts.
11:25Rest.
11:26Caffeine.
11:27A doctor's ground test.
11:28A pill, if it comes to that.
11:32Each is a layer.
11:34And each exists because the layer before it ran out.
11:38Pills are for the mind.
11:40The body files its own demands.
11:43And the bill comes due on every long flight.
11:47This is the part I promised you.
11:49There is no toilet, so there is the bag.
11:54The official name is a relief bag.
11:56Pilots call it a piddle pack.
11:59It is a clear vinyl pouch with a springy wire in the neck.
12:04And inside, absorbent granules turn liquid into gel, so nothing sloshes when the jet pulls hard.
12:13The standard issue one holds about half a litre.
12:17The sequence, according to Air Force pilots who have done it, goes like this.
12:22The flight suit unzips at the top and at the bottom.
12:26You push yourself up off the seat with your heels, one hand still on the stick, and unroll the bag.
12:34You go, seal it, stow it.
12:38One Air Force F-35 pilot likened the whole thing to driving a car through traffic while peeing into a
12:46bag and never leaving your lane.
12:49And the jet does not wait for you to finish.
12:52An F-15E pilot told Task and Purpose about a flight where he was unstrapped and unzipped when a radio
13:02call came in for troops in contact.
13:04He had to point the jet where it needed to go and start moving, trying not to drop a half
13:12-full bag on the floor.
13:14Soldiers on the ground are under fire, and the man flying to help them is holding a bag.
13:20The Air Force knew.
13:23In 2023, it began ground testing a pump system worn under the flight suit with a goal of letting aircrew
13:31relieve themselves without unstrapping.
13:33Before that, the service said, the lack of a decent option left pilots holding it dangerously long or drinking too
13:42little.
13:43And the older systems had been built around male pilots.
13:47A runway, finally.
13:50When Flynn climbed out in Finland, the crossing was only the opening of the job.
13:55His team flew two-hour test missions every day for a week.
13:59Air-to-air combat one day.
14:02Precision ground attack the next.
14:05Maritime defence along the rugged coastline after that.
14:09Then came the trip home.
14:11Same ten hours and the same sixteen refuelling's over the same cold water.
14:18The jet can fly farther than the person inside it can safely stay sharp.
14:24So the system builds patches.
14:27Tankers every half-hour.
14:29A voluntary pill with a doctor watching.
14:32A pump system that took until 2023 to reach ground testing for women flying fighters.
14:40Every one of those exists because someone in a seat hit a limit and the mission kept going.
14:48So when a pilot says he's fine at hour nine, who gets to decide if that's true?
14:56The flight surgeon?
14:58The checklist?
14:59Or the pilot who has spent years training never to say anything else?
15:05And if it were you, with a tanker 20 minutes out and a small supply of pills in your kit,
15:12would you take one?
15:14If you have flown a long ferry leg in a jet or anything else, tell me in the comments what
15:22nobody warned you about.
