Inside the Air Force
One F-22A 'virtually' shot down
RAPTORS DOMINATE ALLIED AIRCRAFT DURING RED FLAG EXERCISE AT NELLIS
Date: March 2, 2007
The F-22A Raptor dominated and frustrated its competition during
recent war games at Nellis Air Force Base, NV, despite being out
numbered by enemy aircraft, the exercise commander said this week.
Over the course of the two-week exercise, aggressors conducted only
one successful simulated shoot-down of an F-22A, Col. Tom Bergeson,
1st Operations Group commander and air expeditionary wing commander of
the Red Flag exercise, said during a Feb. 27 conference call with
reporters from Langley Air Force Base, VA. Red Flag is an "advanced,
realistic aerial combat training exercise designed to give pilots
intense combat experience in a controlled environment," according to a
Feb. 23 Air Force statement. During the exercise, pilots from the U.S.
and allied nations compete against each other in combat missions. Red
Flag is designed for young, inexperienced airmen, Bergeson said. Five
F-22A pilots participating in the war game were just two weeks out of
Raptor flight school. Aside from the recently battle-certified F-22A,
F-15C Eagles and F-16 Falcons assisted Raptor pilots during their
missions, Lt. Col. Dirk Smith, commander of the 94th Fighter Squadron,
said during the same conference call. Airmen from the Royal Australian
Air Force flew the F-111 and C-130s and British pilots flew GR-4
Tornadoes and C-130s in the Feb. 3 to Feb. 16 competition. The F-22A,
with assistance from the F-15C, however, proved extremely successfully
throughout the war game, Bergeson said. The 14 Raptors participating
in the combat exercise completed 100 percent of the missions assigned
at Red Flag. "We had very few, if any, airplanes that survived the
initial onslaught of the Raptor and the Eagle," he said. Each day
pilots are engaged in two "wars," an hour-and-a-half daytime fight and
a nighttime battle, Smith said. The Air Force or "blue" team flew
eight F-22As during the day fight and six at night. The Raptors were
typically up against 10 or 11 aggressor, or "red," aircraft. Missions
included protecting as many as 50 aircraft from enemy threats and
attacks against targets on the ground, as well as close air support.
Additional F-15C Eagles and F-16 Falcons assisted the Raptors during
missions, Smith said. Enemy aggressor aircraft included F-15s and
F-16s that simulate "Soviet-built threats," as well as F-5 aircraft.
After a simulated shoot-down of a red aircraft, that plane would go
back to base, "tag another point and go back as a live fighter," he
said. "So on average, we were probably seeing in the neighborhood of a
three-to-one red force to blue force ratio because we killed them
enough times that they would regenerate up to normally three to even
four times during a scenario," Bergeson said. "The quicker you kill
them, the quicker they regenerate and keep coming back at you and
that's . . . the nature of red flag. "They want to continue to stress
you to create this tactical problem so eventually they're going to get
some guys through so they can give some air-to-air training to all the
rest of the package that's paid a lot of money to get out there to see
it," he added. Raptors were primarily used for the destruction of air
defenses while EA-6 Prowlers and F-16CJs provided suppression of air
defenses. "This was the first time where we'd have F-22s that would go
in, try to take out the enemy air, and then while we were in there, be
able to use our ability to penetrate a little bit more deeply into the
enemy surface-to-air system," Bergeson. "We would drop some weapons
and try to destroy those things." The F-22As performed simulated drops
of the Joint Direct Attack Munition during the war game but did not
utilize any of their electronic attack capabilities, Bergeson said. In
the first day of exercises, the Raptor went up against aggressors it
could possibly face today, Bergeson said. By the third day it battled
aggressors it "might face in the next few years."