★ In August 1967, Chuck Horner returned to Nellis to an assignment in the Combat Crew Training wing. This was not an appealing career move, since the wing was then converting from F-105s to F-111s, which was much more of a bomber than a fighter. After some finagling of dubious legality that kept him technically AWOL for six months but let him avoid his official assignment, he found himself flying as an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School, where a friend, Gary Willard, was the commander. There Horner went to work teaching Wild Weaseling and Electronic Combat for pilots and electronic warfare officers. He also took on special projects, such as testing a new radar bombing system for the F-105 and new Wild Weasel black boxes. Meanwhile, after six months of less than official status, a friend in personnel took care of the paperwork that made Horner legal again.

In March 1968, Major Paul Kunichica asked Horner to join the team at the new Fighter Weapons Center at Nellis. Though the FWS had been set up to teach graduate-level fighter aviation, it soon found itself managing test projects, writing doctrine, and conducting advanced studies, all of which detracted from the quality of its principal mission, and so the center was created to take care of all those noneducation functions, all the projects and functions that needed the expertise resident at Nellis. Instructors from the FWS populated the center, and though they still flew with the FWS, they now spent most of their time working on new bombs or writing requirement documents to guide the development of new aircraft.

Horner and Kunichica, a Japanese-American from Hawaii, had flown with each other a number of times and were friends. Kunichica worked for Colonel Dick Bond, who in turn worked for Brigadier General (soon to be Major General) Zack Taylor. Bond was very smart, below the zone (promoted to rank early), and liked cocky young men who enjoyed staying late at the office, while Taylor, a soft-spoken but tough-as-nails Virginia gentleman who’d been an ace in World War II, was the father of the Fighter Weapons Center, and a man of conspicuous integrity.

After he moved up to the Center, Horner still flew with the squadron and taught, but he spent most of his time on projects such as a study of F-111 bombing accuracy, and on concepts that defined the capabilities needed in the fighter aircraft destined to replace the F-105 and F-4. Out of these concepts came the FX and AX, which eventually turned into the F-15 and the tank-killing A-10.