NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. — U.S. military officers had just finished a mission in the Air Force’s premier exercise to train pilots for air-to-air combat, and something had gone wrong: Rank-and-file troops expected to carry out cyberattacks on enemy air defenses deviated from their plan without warning commanders and pilots.
The situation, described later by a few officers, created a “very excitable and heated” exchange during a post-mission debrief at the Air Force’s Red Flag training exercise, as it’s known, said Air Force Col. DeAnna Burt, a top commander at the exercise. U.S. troops carrying out cyber operations are expected to complete specific assignments, known as contracts. Doing so can create specific windows of time in which U.S. aircraft can attack while facing fewer threats, while deviating from that plan can put pilots at risk in an actual combat operation.
One of the interesting things to me, not really mentioned in the article, is the evolution of Red Flag. Red Flag, instituted after the Vietnam War, was originally designed to give a fighter wing a capstone training exercise, similar to an NTC rotation, that in essence was equivalent to the first 10 missions the wing might see in combat. Statistically, the chances of getting shot down were much higher in the first 10 missions. If you got past that steep learning curve, your chances of survival went up dramatically. So, why not fly the first 10 in peacetime?
But in the ensuing 40 years, Red Flag has evolved to be a complex, joint and even unified exercise. And the focus has shifted somewhat from training the individual aircrews to instead training the leadership of an expeditionary force.
And aside from the training value, Red Flag has also become a sort of think tank, where new concepts and tactics can be tested. I mean, who knew the Air Force even had a Space Aggressor Squadron?
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XBradTC 
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