This is not an advanced combat base thousands of miles from home.
This is Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada.
And the battle you just witnessed wasn't real.
But the lessons learned in that battle will not soon be forgotten by the young pilots
who went through it.
Because this is air combat training, as realistic as human ingenuity and advanced technology
can make.
This is Red Flag.
The real name of this whole game is the most realistic combat training possible.
We often refer to it as the scrimmage before the game.
But what the real bottom line is, it's the best possible training we have any place in
the world and get the closest we can to combat situations.
Colonel William Luke is the commanding officer of the 4440th Tactical Fighter Training Group,
the home of Red Flag.
Here every day more than 100 of the world's most advanced aircraft launch skyward to tangle
in a high speed air battle.
But good percent of our missions are flown with live bombs.
It's not unusual for 60 aircraft to be across targets in very close proximity in less than
10 minutes.
Colonel Doug Melson, second in command at Red Flag, remembers coming here as a new player.
The first several Red Flag sorties that I flew, I was flying in the F-15 here at TDY
from Europe.
And it had been many years since I'd been involved in a true combat situation, but I
couldn't help but walk away from those initial sorties saying, I've been here before and
this is really, really as close to combat as I think I want to get without actually
having being in it.
Since the earliest biplane battles, the technology and techniques of aerial combat have changed
dramatically.
But one fact has remained surprisingly constant.
In every era, the pilot who survives his first few combat missions is very likely to survive
the rest.
In the early stages, they are wrapped up in the conduct of the mission just as they have
been in the past in their home units.
Just getting from point A to point B and getting their bomb on target on time, they're pretty
much maxed out with that.
And the throwing in or the addition of ground and air-to-air threats, generally they can't
do both because just their time efficiency hasn't been developed to the point where they
can do both well enough to keep them alive throughout the entire mission.
American pilots have always trained to improve their flying and gunnery skills, but in Vietnam
they suffered a rude awakening.
Despite their advanced training and equipment, they achieved a far lower kill ratio than
in previous wars.
Colonel Jim Evans is the Deputy Commander for Adversary Tactics at Red Flag.
Air Force did a study that took us all the way back to World War I, and we kind of used
the kill ratio as a measure of merit.
So in World War I, the American pilots had an air-to-air kill ratio of 2.5 to 1.
That's two-and-a-half enemy knockdown for each one of us that were lost.
In World War II, 3 to 1.
In Korea, 10 to 1.
In Vietnam, 2 to 1.
And at the middle of that war, that conflict, it was probably closer to 1 to 1.
What went wrong in Vietnam?
They employed their aircraft.
They didn't have many of them, and so they husbanded them very, very, very smartly, and
they employed them very smart.
They very seldom would allow themselves to get drawn into a situation where they were
at a disadvantage.
They just would not engage if they were at a disadvantage.
The major threats we faced then was the SA-2 guideline missile and the AAA radar-guided
guns.
And again, mainly because of their density and their very limited numbers of targets
that we had.
Their targets were clustered very close together, so it was relatively easily defended, and
they mounted a tremendous density ratio of guns there.
But post-Vietnam studies also pointed to deficiencies in U.S. pilot training.
Colonel Luke.
I went in 1968 to Southeast Asia as a young lieutenant.
I'd finished pilot training.
Went to training in the F-4 and immediately went right to Southeast Asia.
When we were training air to air, we always fought against each other.
And we very seldom talked about anything except the capabilities of how to fight or how to
train F-4s against F-4s or that kind of capability.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the Air Force laid out three clear goals for improved combat
training.
The first goal was to provide realistic combat scenarios, incorporating a full range of hostile
threats on thousands of square miles of ranges in the American West.
The second goal was to create a simulated hostile fleet of dissimilar aircraft with
broad variations in performance, not unlike the mix that pilots might face in wartime.
The third goal was to create a special aggressor force of instructor pilots schooled in the
doctrine and tactics of the most likely enemy forces.
Many of these pilots were only 10 years old when Americans last experienced large-scale
air combat.
And their potential enemies have more and better aircraft than ever before, increasingly
sophisticated air defenses, and improved tactical doctrine.
Red Flag is designed to improve the chances for these pilots in the event they have to
go to war.
I can almost use an analogy of a football game in that most all football coaches take
their second team and run the adversary's plays against their first team.
We do the same.
The playing field for Red Flag spreads over more than 12,000 square miles of southwestern
desert, but the real action is concentrated in an area roughly half the size of the state
of New Jersey.
Lieutenant Colonel Martin Bonin is one of the people in charge of the range.
With 1,400 targets out there, we have simulated a typical battle scene with a forward edge
of the battle area.
We have a simulated tank column breaking through.
Behind that we've got resupply columns, and in the very rear area of our bombing range
we have simulated strategic targets, airfields, resupply depots, and things like that.
And more important, there are radars that match the performance and electronic signature
of enemy radars, threat simulators that lock onto unwary aircraft, guiding guns that do
everything but fire real shells, and simulated surface-to-air missiles that let the pilot
know his aircraft has been shot down.
Red Flag exercises are conducted five times a year at Nellis, as selected units are flown
in from their home bases.
For this Red Flag exercise, more than 300 aircraft have flown in to Nellis.
McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagles from Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, General Dynamics
F-111s from Lake and Heath, England, Dassault Mirages, and Dassault BA Jaguars from France
and Africa.
First Lieutenant John Bratton has come from England, where his F-111 squadron is stationed.
There's a lot of excitement in being told you're coming to Red Flag.
It means a lot of hard work to be prepared for it, but boy, once you get here, you really
find out it's worth it.
A lot of academics, which basically you have to study on your own time.
And then the flying training, you get an increased sortie allotment, which you're going to be
flying more missions right before you go to Red Flag to get your skills fine-tuned.
Red Flag involves far more than just combat air crews.
All the operational personnel, ground crews, and equipment of each unit are also brought
to the exercise.
To prepare and come to Red Flag, it involves a lot of time and man hours and a lot of individual's
parts to figure out how many parts we're going to have to bring, and how many airplanes,
how many pilots, how many maintenance people, how we're going to get them there, how many
141s it's going to take the airlifters here, and they bring the 141s to Holloman and load
us all up, load the pallets on, airlift us here, we get off, we unload our pallets and
set up shop in a hangar, just like this one, then the jets come in, we recover them, we
get them prepped for the next day's flying so they can go out and fight.
In addition, all the support aircraft that would be associated with real combat are involved.
For example, Boeing KC-135 tankers from Strategic Air Command, Lockheed C-130 and C-131 cargo
transports from Trenton Royal Canadian Air Force Base, and Boeing AWACS.
From tankers for in-flight refueling to sophisticated electronic warfare aircraft, nothing is left
out.
Air crews from allied air forces are also part of Red Flag, adding valuable experience
with allied doctrine and with other types of aircraft that aren't in the U.S. inventory.
Captain Jean-Luc Crochard of the French Tactical Air Force.
We are doing the same job, that's flying aircraft, and we also have the same aim.
But what's interesting in meeting those guys is to see the difference of the preparation,
the difference of work, and also see the difference in the aircraft.
Taken together, the units brought in for Red Flag training are known as the Blue Forces,
more than 100 aircraft working together for the first time.
For the two weeks of their Red Flag exercise, they'll be flying against more than 100 aggressor
aircraft, the Red Forces.
The sheer numbers of high-performance aircraft simulating warfare in a limited airspace makes
flight safety a major concern.
I'm sitting in the Range Operations Center, codenamed Blackjack.
In here, we primarily work on flight safety on the ranges.
The ranges are divided into many areas, and we try to de-conflict all the flights in there
and ensure that one flight isn't flying in while another flight is working, for instance.
Here's a typical view of the range information system as we see it on a daily basis.
As you can see, we have outlined the entire range complex, all the different parts of
that complex, as well as some other items.
For instance, in the upper right-hand corner, we have an air refueling track displayed.
You can see the white borders of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona displayed, as well as California.
We have aircraft coded in different colors.
For instance, we have our aggressor aircraft coded in red, and our Blue Forces are generally
coded in green.
No matter how you look at it, Red Flag is simply the world's most sophisticated and
fully equipped training ground for aerial combat.
With Valmet's new Ready-Go, you can combine primary and basic training in a two-in-one
syllabus of 100 hours.
And for better pilot selection, the side-by-side seating enables you to observe the trainee's
flying and psychological progress.
Simultaneously, the turboprop Ready-Go allows you all the acrobatics at high enough speeds
to prepare your trainee for the advanced trainer he'll go on to next.
This safe, high-performance aircraft can cut almost half a million dollars off the training
costs of each pilot.
This means, with Ready-Go, you minimize costs and maximize quality.
This is the Adversary Tactics Building at Nellis Air Force Base, home of the 64th and
65th Aggressor Squadrons.
From the outside, it looks a lot like any other U.S. Air Force building, but the interior
decor has a distinctly different style.
This is where aggressor trainees, both pilots and ground controllers, are immersed in the
culture, history, and military doctrine of their most likely air war opponents.
The objective is to create a special force, thoroughly indoctrinated and retrained, who
will instinctively react to air combat situations, just as enemy pilots would.
The deputy commander of the aggressor forces is Colonel Jim Evans.
What we do, our mission is to emulate Soviet fighter pilots, to train our pilots against
Soviet tactics, to make sure they're prepared should they get in any engagement with Soviets
or people trained by Soviet pilots.
We study the Soviet aircraft and the Soviet equipment, and we send our pilots regularly
to our top intelligence agencies to interface one-on-one with the people that are the best
experts in the Soviet aircraft and the Soviet equipment.
Then we take our pilots and study how Soviets fly that equipment, those airplanes, the tactics
that they fly, and the formations that they fly.
Russian tactics are based upon deception, deceiving maneuvers, flanking maneuvers, and
decoy.
And the object is to get the American pilot to look at a decoy, follow the decoy, when
the real threat is off to the side, coming in from low or high or out of the proverbial
high out of the sun.
Members of the aggressor squadrons are among the Air Force's most experienced pilots.
For admission to aggressor program, regulations require that they have a minimum of 500 hours
of fighter time, equal to three or four years of experience.
But aggressor duty is so desirable to skilled instructor pilots that the average level of
experience is almost three times as high, from 1,200 to 1,500 hours of fighter time.
While many of the units that come to train at Red Flag fly more modern F-15s and F-16s,
the aggressor squadrons fly the older and smaller F-5, painted to resemble Soviet aircraft.
If the intention is to give realistic combat training, why such a disparity in equipment?
The F-5 is very, very close in both size and performance to the MiG-21.
In performance, they're almost exact.
There are some limitations as far as ordinance, and there's some differences in the radar
capabilities.
They're both extremely limited radars, internal radars.
The range is somewhat less in the MiG-21.
But for all intents and purposes, the F-5 is an extremely good MiG-21 simulator.
Because of their experience and their skill, even though they're flying a second-generation
airplane, the F-5 compared to an F-16 or an F-15 is really looking at the airframes themselves
as no contest.
But when you put that experienced pilot in there, he could generally outfly the student
or the operational pilot almost any given day.
And as I say, the objective of the Aggressor Program is not to do that.
The objective is to go out there and provide that realistic threat so that the operational
pilot will learn, expand his capabilities and his experience, and not lose in a fight
with a Soviet or a Soviet client state or a client-trained individual in some future
combat somewhere.
The aggressor squadrons in Red Flag have their own specially trained radar intercept officers
like Captain Keith Russell.
The Soviets rely very heavily on ground controllers.
The aircraft that they have are obviously not as technologically advanced as we have,
and they are very tied to their ground controller.
Their ground controllers simulate, or their ground controllers rather, execute all their
tactics, perform all their tactics, while their air crews simply fly the vectors that
they're given all the way up to the merge until the visual fight.
The job that a GCI controller has in the Air Force, and my specific job, is to get airplanes
together, specifically very small airplanes to get together in a visual arena to where
they see each other so that they can fight.
It is a whole lot easier to keep airplanes apart than it is to get them together, especially
smaller airplanes versus big airplanes.
The resident aggressor units are frequently augmented by units from the Navy, Marine Corps,
and Air Force flying under the aggressor command.
In this particular Red Flag exercise, some F-15 units will be assigned to the Red Forces
to give them an additional high performance capability.
But the air threat of the aggressor forces is only half the problem for the Blue Force
pilots that have to run the Red Flag gauntlet.
Just as in Vietnam, the Red Flag range is heavily seeded with ground-to-air threats,
complete with radar signatures that alert a Blue Force pilot to the specific type of
threat that has locked onto his aircraft.
Each threat requires a different set of reactions, ranging from electronic countermeasures to
evasive maneuvers.
Blue Force pilots are constantly tested and forced to be alert to threats from all directions.
Captain Jim Staples is now chief of the Red Forces Airborne Defense Section, but he used
to be a member of a B-52 crew that took part in Red Flag.
We'd be whipping through the hills and dales at 250 feet off the ground at a good 370 knots
indicated and get the bombs on the target without a problem in the world.
Depart the range, come home, debrief at Nellis, and find out we were dead, dead, dead.
We look at, they show a tape of us with the crosshairs just on us the entire way, and
it is very grim and really hits the home when you think you've done a super job and find
out you were dead miles before the target.
Coordinating all the elements of Red Flag requires the same level of planning as real
warfare.
Battle scenarios are developed by the operations staff of Red Flag headed by Lieutenant Colonel
Ken Schweitzer.
The battle management staff and the air-tasking order, the fragmentary order as we call it,
starts about three days prior to execution.
We distribute that out to all of the players because some of the players are off station
or they don't fly directly off of Nellis Air Force Base.
To get the most from each mission, Red Flag uses an additional unique feature.
Each of the key aircraft participating in Red Flag carries an Airborne Instrumentation
Subsystem or AIS.
The size of a Sidewinder missile, the AIS transmits a constant stream of data on aircraft
position, velocity, acceleration, and altitude.
This information is captured by a number of range sensors and is fed to a sophisticated
central computer system specially developed for Red Flag.
The entire system has been designed and implemented by the Cubic Corporation, and while it is
a technical tour de force, it also serves a very important training function.
In other exercises, kills may be recorded by observers taking notes, and a pilot can
always argue with the referee, but in Red Flag there is no room for argument.
The computer records every move, every simulated missile launch, and accurately assesses the
results.
Victims are told immediately and are temporarily disabled before returning to battle.
And in the extensive debriefing sessions that follow each mission, every move is replayed
in excruciating detail.
When you come in from a mission, you only see the mission through your eyes.
You see everything, how it happened to you, and you don't get the big picture normally.
But when you get back here and you get to look at the screen and see how everybody else
saw it and how that F-15 saw it and how that SAM operator saw it, you really get an understanding
of what really happened out there.
And how does it feel to see yourself die, if only on videotape?
You don't feel good, that's for sure, because you're out there flying as low as you can
stand it, and in the F-model you're flying as fast as you can really stand it.
And when you get back, you know, you've been chaffing and flaring your butt off, and you
just think you've done the best job possible, in fact, nobody could do it any better than
you did.
You're totally exhausted from all the jinking and jiving.
And then to see yourself on the screen of a SAM.
But no matter what happened today, at Red Flag, unlike in real war, you have a chance
to do better tomorrow.
For want of a male, the battle was lost.
Maintenance gives you the edge, weapons that perform when you need them.
Today's high-tech weapons are kept at peak readiness by GE Automated Test Equipment, ATE
that is reliable, flexible, cost-effective for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and
the free world.
New electric automated test equipment, meeting today's maintenance challenges and those of
the 21st century.
In ATE, the name is GE.
Captain John Sutter is an F-15 pilot with the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing based at Holloman
Air Force Base, New Mexico.
His wingman is Lieutenant John Marshall, known as Tank.
For Marshall, this will be his first Red Flag.
Sutter has been here before.
For me, shoot, ever since I learned anything about the Air Force, I always heard go and
be a fighter pilot and go to Red Flag and learn how to fight in wars and things.
So for me, it's always been exciting.
I've been to a couple of them now.
As far as the preparation and all, basically you're trying to hone all your skills, get
together as an element, and hone good element skills between you and your paired element
member, and get excited about coming and doing the whole thing, and that's real easy to do.
As a wingman, my mission primarily is to support him, to make sure that when he's going in
to get a kill, that his six o'clock is clear so that another aircraft doesn't come in and
get him.
Again, it's such a target rich environment out here, generally speaking, he'll engage
and clear me to engage because there's just enough of him.
But my primary role is support, and actually it's a very important one out here.
I say there's so many aircraft that it's very easy for him to be going for another aircraft
and have one come up and get him from behind.
My job is to make sure that doesn't happen.
Marshall and Sutter have completed the necessary flight training and study for Red Flag.
Like the other pilots arriving for Red Flag training, they look forward to matching wits
with the aggressor forces.
But before the exercise begins, they learn that they will not be flying against but as
a part of the aggressor forces.
In order to provide a better training scenario and give the Red Forces a more formidable
array of aircraft, the F-15 wing from Holloman will be flying under the control of the aggressor
forces.
The sudden change in plans doesn't upset Sutter.
In fact, he welcomes it.
Actually in this Red Flag in particular, being part of the Red Force is an advantage to us.
I think it more closely resembles the type of mission I would expect to have to fly,
especially in a European type environment.
Instead of escorting strikers across a FIBA or a hostile territory, which is not something
I look forward to doing, we're playing more of the defensive type role, operating in lane
and area caps, using our radar, which is what we're best at also, detecting the large forces
that are coming at us and killing as many of them as we can.
Sutter and Marshall fly one of the world's most advanced high-performance aircraft, the
F-15 Eagle.
It's just a fun plane to fly.
If you like flying, which obviously everybody here does, then you couldn't ask for a better
airplane to fly.
The responsiveness of the aircraft is just unbelievable.
It's got an excellent turn rate, it's got a great sustained turn rate because of its
extremely powerful engine, just got to thrust a weight of better than one, which gives it
all kinds of acceleration and an extremely good climbing capability.
We would prefer to come in high.
It gives us an energy advantage, and again, the F-15 performs better up high, but the overall
objective to complete the intercept is to use your potential energy, come in from high
and get your mock-up to complete the intercept, although not absolutely necessary.
In aerial combat, speed and maneuverability are of the essence, Captain Henshie.
As I try to turn the airplane, pull back on the stick, and make a sharp corner with the
airplane and change my direction rapidly or stay in a turning fight, then the harder I
turn, the more G's the airplane pulls, the F-15.
What's going to happen as you pull a lot of G's is the blood that is in your head and
upper torso is going to go to your feet, and inconveniently enough, the first thing that
you lose when your blood starts going to your feet is you can't see anymore, which makes
fighting difficult.
So you'll take a short breath, hold it, wait three seconds, three, four seconds, take another
short breath, so you really are grunting a lot and turning pretty high.
Hopefully, if you turn right, you get offensive and you can kill the guy with a quick kill,
so you can stop doing that, but it gets pretty aggressive.
In the morning, Captain Sutter and Lieutenant Marshall pre-flight their aircraft before
the mission.
This is the gun.
Just put it down underneath there to make sure that the aircraft's weapons are not loaded
and performs a visual inspection of the major systems.
The heavy schedule of daily missions places a strain on the highly sophisticated weapon
systems, just as operations in real war.
The Marshal and his ground crew take special care to ensure that things are right.
The Sidewinder is not armed for actual firing on the range, but it's linked to the airborne
instrumentation subsystem.
A simulated firing will register on the range monitoring system and compute the likelihood
of a kill under those specific conditions.
In today's battle, the Blue mission is to attack the advancing Red ground forces with
F-111 bombers and F-4s.
Sutter and Marshall will be part of a force of eight Eagles that will rendezvous with
tankers for aerial refueling, then fly high air cover for the Red forces, while the remainder
of the Red forces flying F-5s provide low-level support against the Blue forces.
Sutter and Marshall's mission is to attack the Blue force aircraft from their high position
as they enter and exit the combat zone.
I'm the mission commander for the F-15s today.
We're going to go out with eight F-15s at one time.
We're going to pre-strike refuel, so we're all topped off with gas, and then we're going
to push all eight aircraft.
We're going to be up high in the contrail level, so the strikers see us coming, and
then at about 20 miles we're going to disappear out of the cons.
As the mission begins, the runways at Nellis scream with the closely timed launch of flight
after flight of aircraft.
Once they're airborne, the aerial dance begins.
Split-second timing and extraordinary skill are the order of the day.
We're going to go out with eight F-15s at one time, and then we're going to push all
of the aircraft out of the combat zone, and then we're going to push all of the aircraft
out of the combat zone.
We're going to go out with eight F-15s at one time, and then we're going to push all
of the aircraft out of combat zone, and then we're going to push all of the aircraft out
of combat zone.
The Edge, weapons that perform when you need them.
Today's high-tech weapons are kept at peak readiness by GE Automated Test Equipment,
ATE that is reliable, flexible, cost-effective for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and
the free world.
General Electric Automated Test Equipment, meeting today's maintenance challenges and
those of the 21st century.
In ATE, the name is GE.
In only an hour, the mission is over.
Winners and losers alike return to assess the day, working with detailed computer recreations
of the mission's events.
For Sutter and Marshall, the day was fruitful.
After the Blue Forces completed their bombing run and began their return to base, the Holloman
F-15s descended from high cover.
In the ensuing fast-paced battles, they engaged and claimed to have shot down several F-111s
and F-4s, but the actual results become crystal clear as they watch the computer recreation
of the day's action.
Okay, what I'm seeing here is I'm painting this three-ship and I lock up what I think
is 20 of the F-111s here, and he's giving me clearance to engage, so as a wingman now,
what that means to me is I'm no longer tied to my responsibility to maintain visual on
him.
I'm clear to go ahead and engage the threat that he's cleared me on there, and again,
like I say, I think I've got contact on 20 here, as it turns out, and I round the corner.
That's true.
Round the corner, I shoot 20 with just a Borsight heat missile, and then I pull off and I shoot
19 with a Borsight heat missile.
I really never see 21, and at this time, the comm is starting to bother me a little bit.
I don't see him.
I hear him talking about engaging, so I think it'll show I'll come off to the right here
initially.
That was good, because you went for him very aggressively there, and when I got the contact
on the trailer, she came off good, and like you said, we're looking real good.
We're right together, but then Bambi makes a bad call here, leaders heading west.
Basically, one of the other elements of F-15s, the flight lead, gave me a call.
There was an F-15 in the flats heading west, and I took that to mean that was him.
I saw that aircraft and started to go for him.
Luckily, Subbot still had a visual on me, called me back to North Worthington, which
basically was a 180 turn for me.
I heard him engage in F-4s out there, and at that point, I had a good idea of what was
going on.
I got a radar contact on him, and we had mutual support via my contact with him at that point.
Okay, I'm attacking the F-111s now.
They popped over the tip of Quinn Peak there, and so they highlighted themselves pretty
well above the mountains.
Now you're coming back.
We're back together, and right here is where I say, okay, I'm passing right underneath
your nose.
Check right.
You still don't see me, and coming up here is where Bambi makes a bad call.
This is a good illustration of the picture I see.
I look off the left of my cockpit, I see two eagles, and I hear somebody telling me, hey,
there's two eagles out in the flat.
Evidently, I only see one, and I'm thinking, great, there's my flight lead, and in fact,
you can see her right back here.
But the call you make shortly thereafter gives me the clue, and I know what's going on.
Well, right here, I say, I'm looking back between the tails at you going with Bambi,
and I say, snap 180 left, and head for the north end of Worthington.
Again, 27 and 28 there.
If we look at the vertical depiction, they're well above the clouds.
They're not a factor at all.
Most lesson learned in the whole world, you know, they say 20-20 vision in the hindsight.
Here's our hindsight on a graphic display in front of us.
So this is probably the best debriefing tool you could ever have, especially when you've
got 80 airplanes running around out there.
The debrief is, I would say you almost get more learning in the debrief than you get
in the flight, because when you go on the flight, if it works great, fine.
Even if it doesn't work great, you might not know it.
You might not see the guy that has shot you down.
So for instance, after the red flag, we will get together as a group our own Red Forces
and go through what happened so we all know what happened.
Then we will get together in the package debriefs where the players for each mini portion of
the war debrief what they saw and do some hand waving.
And then we will play the RFMDS, see what happened, and do a bunch more hand waving
and what did you see, why not, what could have happened differently.
And then of course we'll have the full debrief with the whole package, all the blue, all
the red, and get up and talk about the lessons.
For the combat pilot in modern air war, the key to survival is a total awareness of all
that's going on around him.
It's unbelievable when you're ingressing towards a target and just at the worst time of the
mission is when the F-15 rolls in on you or you get a SAM launch on you and while you're
evading the 15 or you're countering the SAM launch, at the same time you have to be thinking
am I going to make it to my target on time?
Can I head towards the mountains to decrease the threat or should I stay in the lowlands
and proceed right to the target to make my TOT block?
Because that's what it's all about, getting the bombs on target on time.
So you really have to be thinking well ahead of the jet.
By the time they go through a training program, their own, and with our aid and with Red Flag,
we see that they take more of the overall air battle so they're aware of aircraft that
are 5 to 6 miles outside of the battle that will become a threat in 33 seconds and they
have 30 seconds to achieve a kill and then separate before those other hostile bandits
enter the fight.
When we go to fly against new pilots that are new to the weapon system, we can see right
away during the first week on even simple scenarios where they're making a lot of mistakes.
They make a mistake and they're going to die.
Of course, it's on video tape and it's not the real war.
As the week goes on, we may be stalemated to a more neutral, we take our lumps and they
take ours.
By the end of the second week, we're losing and when we're losing, that's the whole point
of our mission.
That makes us feel good because the Blue Forces, the American Air Forces are winning.
The experienced players like Captain Sutter still grow from their Red Flag training.
The first time I came here, I was a fairly junior guy, brand new wingman and they put
me on the wing of a more experienced major who had F-4 and F-5 and F-15 time and so I
think my first Red Flag was really the best learning experience of my life because brand
new right out of the chute, got the chance to participate in a large exercise like this
and yeah, I learned a lot, an awful lot.
The F-15's a machine, we're the pilot and just working the weapon system on it and getting
to do it at that fast pace, just one target after another come off, another contact, ten
miles trying to engage it and be effective in targeting that person coming off and targeting
the next entity.
I think from that standpoint, the Red Flag really served that purpose well.
Tank has really grown through this exercise.
Day one of the war, doesn't really know what to expect from a Red Flag exercise.
First day out there, his primary job and the thing he's really concerned with is just trying
to stay with me through the whole thing.
As days went by now, he gets more comfortable with what's happening in the area.
He starts to expand where he's looking, what he's doing with his radar.
He's going to come out of this now and he'll come back to Red Flag again someday and he'll
be the old head and he'll be teaching the new young guys what to do.
The old heads and the young guys, passing on the fine art of high-speed survival and
aerial combat.
If these pilots are lucky, if all of us are lucky, Red Flag is as close to the real thing
as they will ever come.
But luck has run out before, for nations as well as for individuals.
If you would have peace, prepare for war goes the old saying.
Or as the Red Flag motto puts it, we train like we plan to fight.