Rob Troy

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I am currently a Lieutenant Colonel and an F-16 pilot in the Air National Guard of Minnesota. I fly 6-10 times a month practicing the many air-to-air and air-to-ground missions of the F-16. When not flying, I’m the Chief of Safety and work to educate base personnel on the latest safety information and mishap statistics so they can be knowledgeable of safety trends and make good decisions.

My SMC math education did a great job preparing me for military flying. There’s a lot of tactical problem solving and analysis that goes into mission planning, flying and debriefing F-16 flights. Those critical thinking foundations and thought processes were developed throughout the many math classes. Besides the problem solving, there’s also performance calculations, like determining the amount of time to stay airborne before needing to leave and get fuel, and the tactical calculations like figuring out the range to shoot a missile and still turn around and defeat any missiles that were shot in return. Computers do 99% of these calculations during mission planning, but once airborne, there will always be times when plans change and a pilot is forced to make quick calculations. My SMC math education was a great start and prepared me well.