The best character in this is the jargon. That's not because it's a terrible book; but the plot evolutions aren't hard to guess, and the characters aren't long on dramatic evolution or soliloquy. It's set in a training squadron of F-14s, so there's plenty going on between the short soliloquies.
Half the jargon is wonderful. The in-group affectionate (?) insults and slang are vivid; the half-technical Air Force jargon is so compressed and specific, so expressive, and so clearly designed to be spoken - over noisy headphones, I imagine - that some of it is poetry. (There's a little subplot of a Son Going Wrong to rap music: I hoped for a flight-jargon rap, but no.)
The villain of the piece is also jargon. The obfuscating, self-impressed, inflated managerial jargon of much of the military management, most of the politicians, and all the industry suppliers is as evilly disposed towards Truth and Responsibility as the fliers' and mechanics' jargon is generous.
If jargon is characters, there's a semi-buffoon: the language of feeling and mutual understanding. The tough guys use it as though it were a joke when they actually mean to be kind to each other, which is quite sweet and endearing. There's also a Bridezilla subplot seen through the poor bewildered groom-to-be; another problem with inflated words and symbols.
Punk's Wing is the second of a series, and I hope there will be a third, because it really doesn't end with a triumph. By the end of the book the trainee fliers have mostly survived - survived learning tailhook landings, in-air refueling in a war zone - but the most lethal thing has been a Big Lie, speaking from the chorus of evil jargon, and it hasn't been confronted yet. It isn't clear that there's a mechanism to confront it. But clearly it was a profitable lie, and too many of them would be too much for even the studious, courageous, loyal pilots to overcome. I wasn't expecting a tragedy.
ISBN: 0-451-20877-3