Virtualized Red Flag

 

F-16s fly in formation over the skies

 

Every year for the past four decades, the US Air Force and its NATO allies have staged a series of mock battles -- dubbed Red Flag events -- to provide soldiers with "real-world" experience before actually throwing them into active combat. But this year's Red Flag marks a significant departure from its predecessors in that the 2015 exercise will be the first to virtually integrate warfighters from around the country using cutting-edge flight simulators.

 

Red Flag events are put on by the United States Air Force Warfare Center (USAFWC) and typically held at Nellis Air Force Base, just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. This site provides 15,000 square miles -- roughly half the size of Switzerland -- of open airspace in which participants can operate.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2015/03/16/virtualized-air-force-war-games/

 

I would love to see us simmers go against the pros. LOL

I imagine it'd be like watching a major league baseball team playing against a little league team.

I went out a few times, when I was at Yuma, to the range in use for "agreser squadron vs squadron X" 3v3 or whatever. Even with 80x binocs, I think I saw one of 401's birds go by. Once. Never saw another thing. Those planes, as big and impressive they may be on the ground or during airshow fly-by's, are microscopic in the air. The sky is BIG, and they aren't, by scale, by comparison. Yeah, it's fun to sit near the approach end of the runway to catch them on short final, and having a scanner helps out a lot on when to look where, if you know the airport, but trying to watch them during an excersize is pretty well neigh impossible. They move fast, and, as I said, compared to the sky, may as well not even be there.

Heck, even when we had a pair of FA-18's making strafing runs on our mooring systemat around 0200 one night, when I worked on the Aerostat there in Yuma, and we could track them with the balloon's radar, and see them visually during each pass, during the time they were too close for the radar to "see" (radars have to blank the receiver during the time the transmitter fires), and their lights were on "bright" the whole time, once they made their clearing turn, they were invisable again. I understand the FAA contacted their CO. By the way, 0230 is not a great time to wake up a LtCOL, and to do it to tell him two of his hotshot pilots were not only in restricted airspace, which is located inside another restricted airspace, and making highspeed runs on a target with a big cable running up into the sky. They never saw our tether, or the balloon it went up to. 71M long, white ballooon. BIG. If on had hit the tether (cable I mentioned), it would have torn off a wing, or cut a fuselage (including pilot) in half like a hot knife through butter. AND the balloon would have been lost. I heard the CO took their wings before they even got back to their line-shack for debreif. Met them right on the flightline, pulled the little leather nametags with their wings on them right off their flightsuits.. Boy was he ...annoyed!

ANYway, the whole point being, it's nice to think about seeing things like they were in Top-Gun during the worst of the fur-ball at the end of the movie, truth-in-reality is that you'd never see a hint of an airplane during a Red Flag excersize.

Pat☺

During Red Flag here in Las Vegas, there are several times you can go up at Coyote summit and see them come through the pass. Other than that, you truly can't see much.