![https://youtu.be/bwhBQx76WHY](https://avgeekery.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/KunsanF16.jpg)
How do you evaluate your pilots, test the capabilities of your maintainers, and scare the crap out of your enemy all in one exercise? You conduct an elephant walk!
An elephant walk is a mass launch exercise where a large group of aircraft launch at the same time. Some pilots have joked that you’d throw “everything but the kitchen sink” into the air. These exercises first started with bombing units back in World War II as way to launch large bomber formations. Those launches had upwards of a 1,000 aircraft!
Today, the exercises can have anywhere from 50 to 100 fighters. Walks are also done occasionally at bomber and tanker/transport bases to exercise capabilities.
The elephant walk in this video was filmed at Kunsan Air Base in South Korea back in 2013 by TSgt Michael Schocker. Kunsan Air Base holds strategic significance on the Korean Peninsula as it is an F-16 base and less than a 15 minute flight from North Korea.