September 9, 2021
Unstoppable: What Recent Wargames Reveal About the F-35
The stealth fighter jet has proven to be indispensable as a training platform to give the fleet a taste of what it’s like to be pitted against the cutting-edge capabilities of a fifth-generation stealth fighter.
by Mark Episkopos
The F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighter continues to dominate every wargame it fights in.
Established in 1975, Red Flag is the U.S. Air Force’s premier air combat exercise platform. The exercises originated as a relatively simple air-to-air wargame between “red” and “blue” players but grew in complexity over the decades to encompass surveillance, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, and strike scenarios.
“The aggressor is the person who’s here to train blue by providing a realistic and robust adversary that they, being blue, have to actively fight against. They have to use every bit of the capabilities that they have and every bit of integration that they can compile to achieve what their intent is for that day,” explained F-35 pilot Col. Scott Mills. The red pilots are tasked with pushing the blue team to its limits, identifying and ruthlessly exploiting vulnerabilities as a real adversary would. “The aggressor nation here is one of the best in the world at finding those niches, finding those gaps and seams, and absolutely punishing those mistakes that blue air makes,” Mills added.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/unstoppable-what-recent-wargames-reveal-about-f-35-193305
