Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

Friday, April 15, 1994—Nellis AFB Officers' Club

By the end of the first week of Green Flag 94-3, the 366th and the other attached units of the Blue Force had racked up an impressive record of damage to targets and defending SAM/AAA sites, as well as killing a small air force of adversary F-16s. The first four days had been a clear victory for the Blue Force. The 366th and its attached units were breaking Red/Green Flag records like crazy, and the staff at the Adversary Tactics Division was starting to get a bit punchy.

So the Red Flag staff controlling the exercise decided something had to be done to keep things interesting: Starting the following Monday, the adversary F-16Cs would be allowed to use tactics simulating the very agile and capable Russian Su-27/35 Flanker (it resembles our F-15 Eagle). The rules of engagement would also be loosened for the Red Forces on the ground, making it easier for them to fire their simulated missiles at Blue aircraft.

We spent the afternoon touring the Threat Training Facility across the street from the Red Flag building, which maintains just about the finest collection of foreign military equipment anywhere in America (it's sometimes called the petting zoo). Everything from a French Roland SAM launcher to Russian MiGs can be viewed here. Just ten years ago, the whole facility was highly classified; but now, the Air Force lets Boy Scouts and civic leaders tour the facility. What a change the end of the Cold War has made!

^{A Soviet-built ZSU-23-4 mobile anti-aircraft gun system in the yard of the Nellis AFB threat training facility. This radar-controlled system is one of the significant threats to tactical aircraft, and can be studied by aircrews visiting the base during Red/Green Flag exercises and Weapons school.}

^{Craig E. Kaston}

As the week wore down, and the last mission of the day came in, the thoughts of the aviators and staff officers turned to the observance of a Red/ Green Flag tradition: Friday night at the Nellis O-Club. Now it should be said that given the pressures for moral, physical, and mental perfection, such celebrations are kept to a bare minimum. But to remove the camaraderie of Friday night at the club would be to remove one of the most important social institutions in the pilots' lives. Thus, after appropriate assigning of designated drivers and agreement about the time we would all return to the hotel, we headed down to the Nellis AFB Officers' Club for a long evening of 'Happy Hour.'

The original O-Club that stood during the glory days of the 1970s and 1980s had been torn down a few years back and replaced by a building now used as the open officers' mess and club. The present building, though splendid in its own way, lacks some of the historic character of the old club. To make up for this, the builders of the new facility kept the old club's tabletops (where generations of fighter pilots had burned in their names and messages with woodburning irons) and recycled them as wall panels. As you walk by, you see the names of aces and wild weasels, POWs and MIAs, Medal of Honor winners, and MiG killers; and it is hard not to stare at names of people you know, people you will never know, and those you wish you had known.

^{Colonel Robin Scott, the 366th Wing Operations Group commander (handling billiard balls at left), referees a game of Crud for members of wing at the Nellis AFB Officers' Club on a Friday night.}

^{John D. Gresham}

As the bar area fills up, the evening begins to get more lively. The music is a mix of rock and country, and it is loud! Every generation of USAF fliers has gone to war with their own brand of music. Where World War II vets took Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey records with them, and the Vietnam-era fliers had Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, today's aircrews seem to enjoy country/rock music as the tunes for their times. Back in the '80s, the old days of Red Flag, Friday night was the time for macho contests or even fights in the parking lot, but such behavior does not fly in today's Air Force. Luckily, there is a game called Crud to absorb the competitive energy of the aircrews. Crud is an odd little contest, with elements of soccer, racquet-ball, and billiards all mixed together. Played on a pool table with a pair of billiard balls, it is a full-contact sport for teams of two or more. The idea is to use a cue ball to hit the other ball (you use your bare hands to throw the cue ball), while it bounces around the table. You play in ordered relays, and either a break in the order or a missed ball results in a score. The game requires a referee, and this is inevitably the senior officer present. Normally this would have been General McCloud, but he was attending General Loh's annual wing commanders' conference, so Colonel Robin Scott took over. The Nellis O-Club bar has the finest playing area, called a Crud Pit, in the country. The walls are lined with sandbags, and there is plenty of space to set down long-necked bottles of beer (the favorite of the pilots) while you are playing.

As the evening wore on, and the music got slower so the couples could dance, some of us, including Lieutenant Colonels Clawson and 'Boom-Boom' Turcott, moved to a corner to talk. Toasts were drunk to departed friends, and everyone went their way for the weekend. By midnight, only the AOC staff was still working, the lights in their tent city still glowing as they planned the Phase III strikes for the second week of Green Flag 94-3.

Monday, April 18, 1994

Every April 18th the USAF commemorates Jimmy Doolittle's bombing raid on Japan (Doolittle had recently passed away). This day, however, safety was uppermost in the minds of the Green Flag controllers: Most fatal Red/Green Flag accidents take place on Monday after the weekend break. Throughout the day, especially at the briefings, the safety rules were hammered into the aircrews as they were admonished to 'take it easy' while they got back into the 'groove' of flying. A special safety video was played for the crews just before they headed to their aircraft. With a deafening musical backup from ZZ Top playing 'Viva Las Vegas' (appropriate, don't you think?), it was five minutes of near misses and accidents that will never be shown to the public. The idea was to shock the fliers a bit and make them think.

We sat in on the afternoon briefing in anticipation of watching the live action on the big screen RFMDS (Red Flag Measurement and Debrief System), while the afternoon strikes hit their targets. There were new wrinkles in the balance of forces this day, as the Red Force got their new simulated Flanker fighters, and the Red ground units got their new rules of engagement. There was a shift away from using live ordnance and decoys, since they were in short supply. That morning, we had watched LANTIRN videotapes showing LGB and IIR Maverick missile deliveries, and it was easy to see why the uprange target arrays had taken such a beating the previous week. There is a general shortage of targets at Nellis AFB, and the range crews have to be creative to keep the ranges stocked with fresh ones.

Mother Nature had also decided to spice up the exercise with some variety. The weather had changed, and layers of heavy cloud hung over the northern range areas. Extra precautions would be needed to guarantee deconfliction between aircraft, along with special weather reconnaissance flights to determine if conditions were good enough to run the missions safely. The morning flight had gone all right, but eight hours of the desert sun had stirred up the air considerably, making the weather a bit dicey.

By 1400, we were comfortably seated in the viewing theater in the Red Flag building, staring at a projected screen display of the situation up on the northern ranges. We had a 'God's-eye view' of the action on both sides, and we could identify various aircraft by color codes. The radio chatter on the squadron nets was piped in, giving us the feeling that we were watching some sort of bizarre video game with an audio track. Today's Blue Force targets were restrikes on SCUD and supply convoy targets that needed to be hit again. From the Red Force, with their 'new' airplanes and enhanced ROE, came new tactics. They would attempt to disrupt the strike by attacking Blue's High Value Heavy Airframe Aircraft (HVHAA) such as the E-3, the Rivet Joint, or the tankers. Using a decoy force of aggressor F-16s down low, they would bait the 390th's 'wall of Eagles'; then they would send two other F-16s into a ballistic 'zoom' climb over the top of the F-15s to get at the HVHAAs. This would draw off the escorting Eagles from the strike forces, allowing regenerated aggressor aircraft more freedom of action against the strike aircraft. Red had tried this tactic unsuccessfully several times before, but the combination of the weather and the new rules made them think it might work this time.