Ahh the old F-35. What a classic!
Speaking of classics, My FO flew A-6s (before a long career in the F-18). He said that at the annual get-together he is treated as the kid in the group. He’s 62. Somehow pilots are aging faster than the general population. Is that possible?
Quite. Couple factors; the old breed had a yolo-avant-la-lettre lifestyle. They were firm believers of play hard, party hard, life fast die young and leave a beautiful corpse. All that smoking and drinking and sleeping it off under some tropical sun is not doing much for your skin.
Another thing is that you boys have less atmosphere between you and outer space than mudcrawlers like me when out on the job. There’s all kinds of nasty radiation coming from between the stars and couple thousands feet of nice thick watery air does a lot to stop a bunch of it.
That extra radiation exposure isn’t so much of a factor inside an airplane. Average radiation dose at altitude from inside the cabin is only 0.003 mSv/hr. Average annual human exposure is equivalent to the radiation a pilot gets from 1,000 hours of flight time.
If we’re talking radiation or other external health hazards, particularly from the military, it’s all the military-grade chemicals and radiation from the equipment. Plus general abuse of the body with go/no-go pills, massive-dose vaccines that wouldn’t be approved on the civil market, messed-up sleep cycles, a less-than-healthy diet designed to give fighting energy, excessive weight lifting straining joints, high G also straining joints, etc.
Even once you’re out of the military all that will eventually catch up to you.
That is absolutely not true. We never got any sleep 
Wow that looks upscaled!
I never knew it was that big. Thanks for posting!
I know right?! I was literally blown away.
What an epic Lightning photo! Thanks for posting.
A crossover from the guess that plane thread. A better picture of the VM-T Atlant
I didnt want to spam that thread with pictures of planes only i wanted to see 
Yeah the split tail immediately gave me “Specialized space plane” vibes- now it’s pretty obvious. Thanks for making me discover it!
