The Tuesday display unfolded at Hawaii’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and was captured on camera by aviation enthusiast Chris Amendola, who works as a ramp controller at the facility.
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Footage shared by Amedola on social media shows a total of eight F-22s cooly rolling in sync across an airport runway, with the crystal blue skies of the Aloha State serving as the perfect backdrop. The Raptors are shortly followed by a C-17A and a KC-135R.
According to The Drive’s War Zone, the recorded F-22s belong to the 199th Fighter Squadron, and the C-17A and KC-135R are assigned to the 204th Airlift Squadron and 203rd Air Refueling Squadron, respectively. All three squadrons are based at Honolulu’s Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
Amendola told the outlet that on the day of the aircraft parade, he was at work, waiting to take pictures of planes in the vicinity.
“[I] talked to Hickam Airfield Management prior to the planes' arrival, joking about getting some pics from the stairs they were using on the [runway],” he recalled. “Well, he called 'no joy' on that, which was fine, but when he saw me standing on the back of my pickup truck, trying to get shots he called me over and said ‘run up and get a few pics’ as long as I don't get in the way.”
No stranger to snapping content at a moment’s notice, Amendola hopped to it and managed to collect a handful of photos and videos of the airpower demonstration.
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“I love planes and love taking pics and videos of them,” Amendola added.
The US Air Force also conducted an elephant walk earlier this month at the Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, just days before the service decided to end its 16-year continuous bomber deployment to the island territory.
However, officials have indicated that the removal doesn’t necessarily mean that strategic bombers won’t operate again in the Indo-Pacific region, as the service will decide at a “timing and tempo of our choosing” when to redeploy a bomber or two.
