All in Air Force
Mandy Hickson was the UK’s second female Tornado GR4 pilot. She has the personality one would expect from a woman who had to beat her own path towards a goal she’d been told as a girl was unattainable. She’s lucid, funny and very charismatic. And not somebody you mess with…
Just this once you won’t see Louise’s face because she’s an “intelligence officer – tactical coordinator” on remotely piloted air systems (drones in other words, or RPASs) in the French Air and Space Force so a bit of discretion is in order (…) She is amongst the first to do this job that didn't even exist 12 years ago. But as a child Louise was far from imagining a career in the Air Force. "I had a really strong bond with my grandfather, who was an officer in the Foreign Legion. We would spend long hours riding together, him on his horse and me on my pony." She laughs that "even if I have two brothers, he considered me to be the little soldier of the family…”
Mélanie fires missiles. Somewhat infrequently. That’s because since 2002, when she joined the French Air Force, there have been no enemy air threats against any French military operations. I met her on the disused air force base of Brétigny, just south of Paris, where she’d been rehearsing for the Bastille Day (14th July) parade with her surface-to-air defence squadron (EDSA), whose mission is to protect military installations and points of vital importance, and to support the ground forces. The squadron has also recently been given the responsibility for countering malicious airborne drones…
Sometimes parents don't realize that the news on TV can have a strong impression on their young children and even determine their career path. This is what happened to Charlotte, struck as a small child by images of the Gulf War and today a bomb disposal expert. “I really think it was these images that made me decide to join the military. Anyway, I don't remember ever wanting to do anything other than being in the military,” she says with a quick smile…
When she was a little girl Lauriane wanted to “pilot a pink aeroplane.” Obviously, the Mirage 2000-D that she is piloting 25 years later is not pink, but she accepts that! The only female fighter pilot today on Air Base 133 Nancy-Ochey, this jovial young woman has just qualified as an operational pilot and will be leaving for her first operational mission in the next two months…
Anaïs knows that sometime in 2021, although the exact date remains to be determined, she will move up a rank from Squadron Leader to Wing Commander. This charming young woman also knows that she will be leaving the greyness of Air Base 105 in Evreux, 100 kms west-north-west of Paris, to take a command post under the sunnier skies of Martinique where she will be director of the State Aeronautics Centre. “At the civilian airport there is a military zone that I’ll be responsible for,” she tells me, adding enthusiastically that the advantage of working in the armed forces is “that you can have several careers in one”…
