Military Aviation · Explainer

How the Marine Corps Makes a Fighter Pilot

A century of history, a series of narrowing gates, and a daily job that is almost never flying — inside the pipeline that now feeds an all fifth-generation fighter force.

By Dexter Dow · Granite State Report · July 29, 2026

On the morning of June 3, five AV-8B Harriers lifted off the flight line at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, flew a last formation over eastern North Carolina, and shut down in front of a crowd of more than five thousand people. The Marine Corps had put the ceremony on the calendar for 1000 EDT in a message signed out by Lieutenant General William H. Swan, the Deputy Commandant for Aviation. When those engines wound down, fifty-five years of Marine jump-jet flying ended.

What replaced it changes who gets into a Marine fighter cockpit, and how.

The Corps is more than halfway through a plan to move its entire tactical aircraft force onto one airplane, the F-35 Lightning II. Its own 2026 Aviation Plan says so in the first line of the fixed-wing section. That consolidation runs backward through flight school, because the pipeline that produces a Marine fighter pilot is not a course. It is a series of narrowing gates, each with its own method of removing people, and the Corps is now trying to push more aviators through those gates faster without softening the standard at any of them.

Here is where the whole thing came from, and what each gate looks like now.

The maxim that still runs everything

Marine aviation has a birthday, and it is not the day anyone flew.

On May 22, 1912, First Lieutenant Alfred A. Cunningham reported to the Naval Aviation Camp at Annapolis, Maryland, for duty in connection with aviation. Headquarters Marine Corps still marks that date as the birth of Marine Corps aviation. Cunningham had spent the previous year in Philadelphia leasing an airplane he could not get off the ground and lobbying anyone who would listen. He made his first flight as a Marine aviator that August at Marblehead, Massachusetts. In July 1918 he took the 1st Marine Aviation Force to France, where it was designated the Northern Bombing Group.

The Corps has counted its firsts carefully ever since. Sergeant James Maguire reported as the first Marine aircraft mechanic that September. Second Lieutenant Ralph Talbot and Gunnery Sergeant Robert G. Robinson became the first Marine aviation personnel awarded the Medal of Honor, for actions in the First World War. Colonel Karen Brannen and Captain Vernice Armour were among the first women to fly Marine aircraft in combat. Every one of those names appears in a 2022 letter to the fleet from the Deputy Commandant for Aviation, which is a fair indication of how the institution thinks about its own lineage.

Cunningham left behind something more durable than a date. His argument was that the only reason for Marine aviation to exist is to support the Marine on the ground. That idea is not a museum plaque. It is why every Marine pilot is an infantry-trained officer first, why the Corps kept a jet that could operate off a road when nobody else wanted one, and why the office that develops Marine aviation weapons today is called the Cunningham Group.

You are an officer before you are a pilot

No enlisted Marine flies a Marine fighter. Every Marine pilot is a commissioned officer, and the commission comes first.

Four routes lead in: Officer Candidates School for college graduates, the Platoon Leaders Class for undergraduates who train during summers and commission after finishing a degree, the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, and the Naval Academy. Candidates who want to fly compete for an aviation contract, which guarantees a seat at flight school. It does not guarantee an airframe. Officer Candidates School at Quantico runs ten weeks, and the Marine Corps’ own officer-programs material describes The Basic School, also at Quantico, as a six-month finishing course that every newly commissioned second lieutenant attends.

That last part is the piece civilians skip. A Marine holding an air contract spends half a year learning to lead an infantry platoon before touching a trainer aircraft. The Corps builds officers who happen to fly, in that order, and it does not treat the sequence as ceremony. Cunningham wrote the reason down more than a hundred years ago.

The test that sorts everyone

The gate that thins the field earliest is a standardized exam.

The Aviation Selection Test Battery is used by the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard to screen applicants for officer aviation programs, and it is administered at Marine Corps Officer Selection Offices among other sites. Applicants who sit the full battery come out with a set of composite scores. Two of them decide whether a pilot applicant is competitive.

• Academic Qualifications Rating. Predicts academic performance in Aviation Preflight Indoctrination and primary-phase ground school. Influenced most by the math subtest.
• Pilot Flight Aptitude Rating. Predicts flight performance in primary training. Weighted most heavily toward the aviation-and-nautical-information and spatial subtests.
• Officer Aptitude Rating. The general officer-program composite, drawn from the math, reading, and mechanical comprehension subtests.

Pilot selection runs on the first two together. Both are reported as stanines on a one-to-nine scale, and the minimum qualifying scores are set by Navy Personnel Command and the Commandant of the Marine Corps rather than published as a fixed public cutoff. An applicant does not get to check their number against a posted line.

The retest rules matter more than most applicants expect. There is a three-test lifetime limit, and a first retake cannot happen before the thirty-first day after the initial attempt. Three tries. That is the entire allotment, for life.

Of the subtests, the aviation and nautical information section is the one that rewards preparation most directly, because it measures knowledge rather than aptitude: terminology, aircraft components, aerodynamic principles, flight rules. Spatial apperception is closer to raw wiring. It shows a candidate the view out of a cockpit and asks which of five outside views of the aircraft matches it, which is a test of holding an object’s orientation in three dimensions in your head.

Pensacola to the Wings of Gold

Flight training itself belongs to the Navy. Marine students move through the same schoolhouses as Navy students under the Chief of Naval Air Training, with Marine Aviation Training Support Groups embedded in the training commands to handle Marine-specific business.

The sequence opens with Aviation Preflight Indoctrination at Naval Air Station Pensacola: academics and survival training, no flying. Primary follows in the T-6B Texan II, at two squadrons under Training Air Wing Four and three under Training Air Wing Five. The T-6B replaced the T-34C Turbo Mentor in April 2015, and it was chosen partly for what its cockpit teaches. Glass displays, a head-up display, hands-on throttle and stick. CNATRA describes the design intent as easing the move into more sophisticated follow-on and fleet aircraft.

Then comes the gate that decides careers. CNATRA runs six pilot pipelines: Strike, Rotary, Maritime, Tilt-rotor, E-2/C-2, and E-6. Students rank their preferences near the end of primary. Selection weighs those preferences against class standing and, decisively, the needs of the Marine Corps. Wanting jets does not get anyone jets.

Students who draw Strike go to the T-45C Goshawk, either at Training Air Wing One at NAS Meridian, Mississippi, or Training Air Wing Two at NAS Kingsville, Texas. That syllabus covers intermediate and advanced jet work — formation, instruments, gunnery, carrier qualification. On completing advanced, students are designated Naval Aviators and receive the Wings of Gold.

CNATRA states plainly that F-35B and F-35C pilots come out of the Strike pipeline. So did Hornet and Harrier pilots before them. The airframes at the far end changed. The funnel did not.

Not everyone who wins wings flies a fighter

Six pipelines, one of which is Strike. Most Marines who earn the Wings of Gold never fly a fighter at all, and the aircraft they do fly carry the bulk of the Corps’ actual work.

The MV-22B Osprey is the biggest of those communities. Sixteen active squadrons and two reserve squadrons against a program of record of 359 aircraft. Since the first deployment in 2007 the fleet has flown 111 operational deployments and more than 600,000 flight hours, roughly twice as many hours per year as any other Marine rotary-wing aircraft. The Osprey has taken heavy public criticism over mechanical failures, and the Corps addresses it directly in the 2026 plan: as of January 2026 the aircraft’s ten-year Class A mishap rate stood at 2.37 per 100,000 flight hours, against a Marine Corps average of 3.3. The plan also details a redesigned proprotor gearbox and new drivetrain sensors intended to forecast component failures before they happen.

The rest of the Aviation Combat Element runs alongside it. The CH-53K King Stallion, which the plan credits with three times the range and payload of the CH-53E it replaces, is being bought at 200 airframes and will finish replacing the Echo by fiscal 2032. The AH-1Z Viper and UH-1Y Venom light attack fleet is fully delivered at 349 aircraft procured, 301 currently on the books, and is planned to keep flying into the 2040s. The KC-130J is the Corps’ only fixed-wing tactical lift and aerial refueling tanker, at 82 percent of its 95-aircraft program of record, with VMGR-153 at MCAS Kaneohe Bay due to declare full operational capability in September 2026. Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons fly the MQ-9A Reaper, and HMX-1 flies the President.

Each of those has its own trainer and its own schoolhouse. Rotary and tiltrotor students go to the TH-73A Thrasher. Multi-engine students are moving from the T-44A Pegasus to the T-54A Marlin, which the Corps chose for its glass cockpit because it better resembles the aircraft students will go on to fly. The point holds across all of them: the Wings of Gold are a beginning, and the airplane you get is a decision somebody else makes.

The eight-year clock

Winging is not the finish line. It starts a legal obligation, and the number is fixed by federal statute rather than by the Marine Corps.

Stack commissioning, The Basic School, and the flight school pipeline in front of that eight years, and a Marine who signs an air contract at twenty-two is committing a large piece of their twenties and thirties. Fixed-wing jet pilots carry the longest minimum obligation of any flight crew category in the statute. Note the asymmetry the statute creates: a Marine who draws helicopters owes six years, and a Marine who draws jets owes eight, for the same wings and the same selection board. That is the price of the most expensive training the Corps hands out, and it is a deliberate trade the government made in law.

Learning the actual airplane

A newly winged aviator still cannot fly a fleet fighter. The Wings of Gold certify a Naval Aviator, not an F-35 pilot.

That conversion happens at a Fleet Replacement Squadron. The 2026 Aviation Plan lays out the current arrangement: an F-35B replacement squadron on each coast plus an F-35C replacement detachment, feeding 14 fleet squadrons. Only after that does a lieutenant or captain report to an operational squadron, arriving as the most junior pilot in the room with a fresh qualification and not much else.

What the job is, once the wings are on

Almost none of it is flying.

Fighter squadrons run on a flight schedule, and one training sortie eats most of the duty day around it. Mission planning first. Then a formal brief with the flight, where the lead walks the plan and the objectives and everyone gets their questions answered before anyone touches a jet. Then gear, then the flight. Then a debrief that routinely runs longer than the sortie itself, with recorded cockpit video pulled apart event by event. Nobody spends the debrief grading the takeoff. They grade the decisions.

On top of that, every pilot holds a ground billet: a real job running some piece of the squadron, whether that is the schedules shop, safety, maintenance liaison, or training records. It is not a courtesy assignment, and performance evaluations turn on it.

Capt. Chris Shannon, an Air Force F-35A pilot with the 421st Fighter Squadron at Hill Air Force Base, described the ratio to Fox 13 in Salt Lake City in 2021, saying “every fighter pilot has basically a full-time job to keep the squadron running,” on top of flying and working through upgrade qualifications. Different service, same arithmetic. He put the share of the job that is preparation rather than flight at roughly ninety percent.

Then there is the readiness math nobody puts in a recruiting brochure. The Corps’ 2026 plan sets more than 85 percent mission-capable aircraft as a future desired state, which is a plain-language admission of where the fleet sits today. Fewer available jets means fewer sorties flown, and fewer sorties means slower progression through the qualifications that make a pilot useful to a commander.

The risk is not abstract either. The Corps’ own plan reports that historically 78.8 percent of its aviation mishaps have involved human factors, and that close to 30 percent of Class A through D mishaps trace to procedural non-compliance. Its stated safety goal for 2026 is twenty-six fewer mishaps than the year before, building toward forty-five fewer by 2028 and a total under a hundred a year. Marine aviation wrote that down about itself, in public, in February.

Where the deployments come from

Two rotations dominate a Marine aviator’s calendar.

The first is the Marine Expeditionary Unit, which puts a small detachment of aircraft afloat on amphibious shipping with a ground combat element and a logistics element attached. A MEU is the Corps’ standing crisis-response package, and an aviation detachment deploys with it for months at a time. The Harrier’s last operational act was exactly this: a VMA-223 detachment with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, supporting operations in the Caribbean, returning to Cherry Point in May 2026 weeks before the sundown ceremony.

The second is the Unit Deployment Program, which rotates whole squadrons through the Pacific. The 2026 plan states that once East Coast Hornets sundown in fiscal 2028, the F-35 begins covering all East Coast MEU and Unit Deployment Program obligations starting with the 26th MEU. That is a real workload transfer onto a fleet that is still growing, and it is one of the reasons the pipeline question matters now rather than in a decade.

What comes after the first tour

A pilot arriving at a fleet squadron starts as a wingman and works up: section lead, then division lead, then instructor qualifications inside the squadron, each one a formal syllabus with check flights.

The peak of the tactical track is the Weapons and Tactics Instructor course run by Marine Aviation Weapons and Tactics Squadron One at MCAS Yuma, in what the Corps calls its premier aviation training range. Graduates go back to their squadrons as the resident tactical authority. A separate path leads to Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron One, also at Yuma, which is where the Corps establishes what new aircraft and weapons can do before the fleet gets them.

Past that sit department head tours, staff assignments that involve very little flying, and eventually squadron command. The 2026 plan is candid that holding onto people through this stretch is the hard part. It describes a new Manpower Analysis Cell, strengthened retention incentives, and pay increases sought for enlisted aircrew through the Critical Skills Incentive Program. The Corps is competing for these people against airlines and against everything else a mid-thirties professional could be doing.

The jet that proved the maxim

The Harrier is worth a section of its own, because it is the clearest expression of Cunningham’s maxim the Corps ever bought.

The Marine Corps accepted its first AV-8A in 1971. In 1985, VMA-331 at MCAS Beaufort became the first operational AV-8B squadron, and VMA-223 picked up the aircraft in 1987. Over fifty-five years the jet flew in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Allied Force, Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, Odyssey Dawn, Inherent Resolve, and operations during the Red Sea crisis. It could take off from a road, a clearing, or the deck of an amphibious ship, which is exactly the capability Cunningham was arguing for in 1912 with different technology.

Lt. Col. John B. Cumbie, the commanding officer of VMA-223, said in the Marine Corps’ own account of the ceremony that “the Harrier will be remembered for its distinguished combat legacy,” along with its vertical landing capability and the Marines who kept it flying. The Corps has published photographs of the final formation from that morning.

Here is the part that closes the loop. VMA-223 is not gone. The Marine Corps says the squadron is scheduled to reactivate in fiscal 2028 as VMFA-223, flying the F-35B. The name survives, the aircraft changes, and somebody has to fill those cockpits. Those pilots are in the pipeline right now, or they have not applied yet.

The pipeline is the constraint

The Corps knows where the pressure sits, because it published the list.

The 2026 Aviation Plan names what has to stay funded to hold readiness: accessions, flight school, and the Fleet Replacement Squadron, alongside improving pipeline efficiency without giving up standards. It flags instructor qualifications as shaping future Marine aviators and says those billets have to be filled with precision and priority. None of that is an aircraft problem. All of it is a people problem.

The hardware pressure is real too. The T-45C is old enough to need a service life extension program to hold on until a replacement fields in the mid-2030s. Its successor, the Undergraduate Jet Training System, was set for a request for proposals to industry in early 2026, with the Department of the Navy intending to sign a contract by January 2027. Every Marine jet pilot produced for the next decade goes through an aging trainer while that competition plays out. The Corps is trying to buy time with simulators instead, planning to add 24 aircrew simulators and 10 maintenance training devices by 2030, and expanding a distributed virtual training environment to all four Marine Aircraft Wings.

Meanwhile demand climbs. F-35 fleet squadrons currently hold ten primary aircraft each, and an approved plan grows every one of them to twelve by fiscal 2035, adding two pilots and twenty-five maintenance Marines per squadron. The legacy Hornet is on its way out: 125 airframes, down to two active squadrons and one reserve squadron through the end of fiscal 2026, with East Coast Hornets sundowning in fiscal 2028 and structure requirements ending in fiscal 2029. Harrier and Hornet pilots moving into F-35 cockpits absorb part of the gap. New lieutenants have to cover the rest.

By the end of this year the Corps expects to have taken delivery of 205 F-35Bs and 56 F-35Cs against a program of record of 420 aircraft. The jets were the expensive part and the visible part, and that part is nearly finished. The harder problem is the one Marine aviation has now described in its own planning documents two years running: whether the schoolhouse can produce enough qualified people to fill the cockpits the Corps already bought.

Cunningham got his airplane by pestering people until somebody said yes. A hundred and fourteen years later the Corps has the airplanes and is short the pipeline. The problem inverted.

More on this

I cover aviation on video at Cockpit Reads, where I fly scenic routes in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and run deep commentary on military, foreign policy, history, and government, plus audio readings from my own books and coverage from Granite State Report.

Fact check

Claim	Status	Source
AV-8B sundown ceremony on the Cherry Point flight line at 1000 EDT, June 3, 2026; release authorized by LtGen William H. Swan, Deputy Commandant for Aviation	VERIFIED	MARADMIN 107/26, signed March 17, 2026, marines.mil
Over 5,000 attendees; five-aircraft formation and vertical landing; Harrier served 55 years	VERIFIED	“VMA-223 celebrates sundown as Marine Corps’ final Harrier squadron,” Capt. Jacob Ballard, 2nd MAW, marines.mil, June 3, 2026
Cunningham reported to the Naval Aviation Camp at Annapolis May 22, 1912; first flight as a Marine aviator August 20, 1912 at Marblehead, Massachusetts	VERIFIED	Lt. Gen. Mark R. Wise, Deputy Commandant for Aviation, letter to the fleet, aviation.marines.mil, May 20, 2022
Sgt. James Maguire first Marine aircraft mechanic; 2ndLt Ralph Talbot and GySgt Robert G. Robinson first Marine aviation Medal of Honor recipients; Col. Karen Brannen and Capt. Vernice Armour among the first female combat aviators	VERIFIED	Lt. Gen. Mark R. Wise letter to the fleet, aviation.marines.mil, May 20, 2022
Cunningham commanded the 1st Marine Aviation Force in France from July 1918, designated the Northern Bombing Group	ATTRIBUTED	DVIDS feature on A. A. Cunningham; Navy Cross citation via U.S. Navy Memorial. Read via search summary, not opened directly.
Cunningham’s maxim that the only reason for Marine aviation is to support the Marine on the ground	ATTRIBUTED	Marine Corps Association, Leatherneck, “Alfred A. Cunningham: Father of Marine Corps Aviation.” Characterized as his argument, not quoted verbatim.
HQMC Aviation’s weapons development office is the Cunningham Group	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.6; listed as a branch on aviation.marines.mil
Marine Aviation “more than halfway through” the Tactical Aircraft Transition Plan to the F-35	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.1
Commissioning routes: OCS, Platoon Leaders Class, NROTC, Naval Academy; aviation contract guarantees flight school, not airframe; OCS ten weeks; The Basic School six months	VERIFIED	USMC Aviation Prospectus and officer programs material, officer.marines.com
ASTB used by Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard; administered at Marine Corps Officer Selection Offices; AQR and PFAR decide pilot selection; stanines 1–9; minimums set by Navy Personnel Command and the Commandant; three-test lifetime limit with a 31-day first retest interval	VERIFIED	ASTB Overview, officer.marines.com
Six CNATRA pilot pipelines; primary in the T-6B at TW-4 and TW-5; T-6B replaced the T-34C in April 2015; intermediate and advanced Strike in the T-45C at NAS Meridian or NAS Kingsville; Wings of Gold on completion of advanced; F-35B/C pilots come from Strike	VERIFIED	Chief of Naval Air Training, cnatra.navy.mil
MV-22B: 16 active and 2 reserve squadrons, program of record 359; 111 operational deployments and over 600,000 flight hours since 2007; roughly twice the annual hours of any other Marine rotary-wing aircraft; 10-year Class A mishap rate 2.37 per 100,000 hours vs a Marine Corps average of 3.3 as of January 2026	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.2
CH-53K three times the range and payload of the CH-53E; 200 aircraft procured; replaces the CH-53E by FY32	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.3
H-1 program of record 349 fully delivered, total inventory 301, planned to fly into the 2040s	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.3
KC-130J the only Marine fixed-wing tactical lift and aerial-refueling tanker; 82 percent of a 95-aircraft program of record delivered; VMGR-153 at MCAS Kaneohe Bay to declare FOC in September 2026	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.1
TH-73A Thrasher for rotary and tiltrotor training; T-54A Marlin replacing the T-44A for advanced multi-engine, chosen for its glass cockpit	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.10
10 U.S.C. § 653: eight-year minimum for fixed-wing jet pilots, six for other pilots and for naval flight officers; clock runs after completion of undergraduate pilot training	VERIFIED	10 U.S.C. § 653, statutory text read this run
An F-35B Fleet Replacement Squadron on each coast plus an F-35C FRS detachment, supporting 14 fleet squadrons	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.1
“Every fighter pilot has basically a full-time job to keep the squadron running”; roughly 90 percent of the job is preparation	ATTRIBUTED	Capt. Chris Shannon, USAF, 421st Fighter Squadron, to Fox 13 Salt Lake City, 2021. Air Force F-35A pilot, not USMC; labeled as a cross-service illustration in the text.
More than 85 percent mission-capable aircraft listed as a future desired state	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 2.3 graphic
78.8 percent of mishaps historically involve human factors; close to 30 percent of Class A–D mishaps tied to procedural non-compliance; 2026 goal of 26 fewer, 45 fewer by 2028, under 100 total annually	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 2.1
VMA-223’s final detachment deployed with the 22nd MEU supporting Caribbean operations and returned to Cherry Point in May 2026	VERIFIED	marines.mil VMA-223 sundown article, June 3, 2026; 2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.1
Once East Coast Hornets sundown in FY28, the F-35 begins supporting all East Coast MEU and Unit Deployment Program obligations starting with the 26th MEU	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.1
WTI course run by MAWTS-1 at MCAS Yuma; Yuma Training Area described as the premier aviation training range; VMX-1 conducts operational test at Yuma	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Secs. 3.9 and 6.3
Manpower Analysis Cell established after the 2025 plan; retention incentives strengthened; Critical Skills Incentive Program pay sought for enlisted aircrew	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 2.4
Funding priorities include accessions, flight school, and the FRS; instructor billets filled with precision and priority	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 2.4
T-45 service life extension until a replacement fields in the mid-2030s; UJTS RFP early 2026 with a contract intended by January 2027; 24 aircrew simulators and 10 maintenance devices added by 2030; distributed virtual training environment expanding to 1st and 4th MAWs in FY26	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Secs. 3.9 and 3.10
F-35 squadrons at 10 primary aircraft, approved growth to 12 by FY35, adding two pilots and 25 maintenance Marines each; 125 F/A-18s with two active and one reserve squadron through FY26; East Coast Hornets sundown FY28; structure ends FY29; 205 F-35B and 56 F-35C by end of 2026 against a 420-aircraft program of record	VERIFIED	2026 Marine Aviation Plan, Sec. 3.1
First AV-8A accepted 1971; VMA-331 first operational AV-8B squadron 1985; VMA-223 began flying the AV-8B 1987; combat record Desert Shield through the Red Sea crisis; “the Harrier will be remembered for its distinguished combat legacy” (Lt. Col. John B. Cumbie); VMA-223 reactivates FY2028 as VMFA-223 on the F-35B	VERIFIED	marines.mil VMA-223 sundown article, June 3, 2026
Cockpit Reads channel at youtube.com/@CockpitReads and the embedded episode	VERIFIED	Channel and video confirmed live via YouTube: “Cockpit Reads By Dexter Dow,” channel ID UCBFgIZl6q_sewKY87g_JA9g
All seven photographs are public domain or Creative Commons, credited to the named photographer or archive, with the licence named	VERIFIED	Licence metadata retrieved from Wikimedia Commons for each file; six public domain U.S. Government works, one CC BY 2.0 (USMC Archives)
Both DVIDS videos are public-domain U.S. Marine Corps works; both YouTube Marine Corps videos are from the official Marine Corps channel	VERIFIED	DVIDS records 1009138 and 1006657; YouTube publisher confirmed as “Marines” for both embedded Marine Corps videos

Editor’s note: This article was built from the 2026 Marine Aviation Plan, MARADMIN 107/26, the Marine Corps’ own account of the VMA-223 sundown ceremony, a 2022 letter to the fleet from the Deputy Commandant for Aviation on Alfred A. Cunningham, Chief of Naval Air Training pipeline documentation, U.S. Marine Corps officer-programs material on the Aviation Selection Test Battery, and the text of 10 U.S.C. § 653. Three claims rest on named secondary reporting rather than official documents and are labeled ATTRIBUTED in the fact-check table above. The Aviation Selection Test Battery overview published by Marine Corps officer programs describes an earlier revision of the exam and references retired trainer aircraft; only its scoring structure, selection ratings, administration, and retest rules are relied on here, and current aircraft details come from the Chief of Naval Air Training and the 2026 Aviation Plan. Every photograph is a public-domain U.S. Government work except Cunningham’s aviator certificate, which the Marine Corps Archives publishes under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 licence; all are credited to the photographer or archive that made them and are embedded directly in this page rather than linked from another server. Embedded video comes from the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, the official U.S. Marine Corps YouTube channel, and the author’s own channel. This piece carries no on-record interview conducted by Granite State Report, which caps it at A− under GSR’s grading standard. Granite State Report is an independent New Hampshire outlet and has no affiliation with the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, or Lockheed Martin.

— Dexter Dow, Editor

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