Beyond Blue Four: the past and future transformation of Red Flag

Air & Space Power Journal, Summer, 2005 by Alexander Berger

Editorial Abstract: Since its inception, Red Flag has trained aircrews to survive their first 10 combat missions. As the complexity of air operations has increased, however, so has the pressure to expand the exercise's training focus. This article reviews the historical origins of Red Flag, highlights recent changes to the exercise, and provides recommendations on how to guide its future transformation.

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FOR ALMOST 30 years, the Red Flag exercise has trained Blue Four--lieutenants and captains competent in their aircraft but without flying experience in a composite strike force--to survive in combat. Red Flag has also given more experienced pilots the opportunity to serve as mission and package commanders in order to learn the best way of employing an integrated, large-force package to achieve a tactical mission objective. However, as the complexity of air operations has increased with the advent of network-centric warfare, precision-guided munitions, and stealth technology, and as special operations, space, and information warfare have integrated with combat air forces, so has the pressure increased to change Red Flag to include more platforms and expand its training focus.

Because realistic training at Red Flag has not kept pace with the changing nature of warfare, the exercise is wrought with "Red Flagisms" that limit its value. Today's aircrews, trained to think operationally, are directed to focus on the tactical problem of the day at Red Flag. They fly over air-defense sites to hit individual targets although their experience tells them to first roll back enemy ground threats with stealth and electronic-warfare aircraft as well as precision-guided bombs. This article considers the changes Red Flag has undergone since its inception, evaluates their impact, and recommends ways of managing the transformation of this exercise.

History of Red Flag

The genesis of Red Flag traces back to the Vietnam era, when the air-combat effectiveness of the US Air Force dropped dramatically. Specifically, the Air Force enjoyed a 10-to-one kill ratio during the Korean War but only a two-to-one advantage during the latter part of the Vietnam War. Disturbed by this trend, the service set out to identify the root cause of its loss in proficiency, tasking its Tactical Fighter Weapons Center at Nellis AFB, Nevada, to conduct a series of studies called Project Red Baron to analyze all air-to-air engagements during the war in Southeast Asia. An interim report released in 1972 identified three significant trends. First, it found that multirole fighter units were expected to perform such a broad range of missions that pilots lacked proficiency across the board. Second, most pilots who were shot down never saw their attackers and did not even know that the enemy had engaged them. The report concluded that since pilots routinely trained against US aircraft from their own squadrons, they were unaccustomed to looking for the smaller, more agile aircraft flown by the North Vietnamese. Finally, Air Force pilots not only lacked familiarity with the enemy's fighter tactics and aircraft capabilities but also did not develop or train with tactics intended to exploit the adversary's weaknesses. As a result, they could not adapt to the fast maneuvering by North Vietnamese fighters during dogfights. (1)

Other studies at the time found that aircrew training and proficiency problems extended beyond the Vietnam War. The Litton Corporation, for example, studied air-combat trends in every conflict from World War I through the Vietnam War, concluding that a pilot's first 10 combat missions were the most critical.2 If aircrew members survived those missions, their chances for victory and survival increased dramatically.

Graduated, Realistic Training

The lessons of these studies quickly spread throughout the Air Force, and senior leaders directed dramatic changes in aircrew training. In response to the observation that multirole fighter units could not effectively train in all missions, the Air Force specified a primary and secondary "designed operational capability" for each squadron, allowing pilots to specialize in specific mission areas such as air-to-air or ground attack. (3)

In order to address the problems of visually identifying enemy fighters and developing tactics to exploit enemy weaknesses, Tactical Air Command (TAC) started an initiative called "Readiness through Realism," which made combat training more intense and realistic than in the past. One key recommendation from the Red Baron report stated that "realistic training can only be gained through study of, and actual engagements with, possessed enemy aircraft or realistic substitutes." (4) Therefore, dissimilar air combat training (DACT) became a mandatory part of a pilot's mission-qualification and continuation-training program. Between 1972 and 1976, the Air Force created four aggressor squadrons--flying T-38 and then F-5 trainer jets with Soviet-style paint schemes--specifically to provide DACT to fighter pilots. Rather than flying these jets like American pilots, aggressor pilots learned and adopted Soviet fighters' maneuvers and tactics.