Lt. Col. Douglas Schaare, assigned to the 55th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, logged his 4,000th flight hour in the F-16 Fighting Falcon during a close air support sortie over Iraq on 1 August. Schaare, a native of Orlando, Florida, is a 1988 graduate of the US Air Force Academy. Assigned to Shaw AFB, South Carolina, he is on his second deployment to Balad. Schaare is the thirty-fourth pilot to reach the 4,000 flight hour mark in the F-16. Of the pilots to reach that milestone, three have been deployed to Balad: Col. Gary Middlebrooks, Col. Robert McCutchen, and Col. David A. Lujan.
