“The Spirits of Louisiana and Pennsylvania” B‐2s from the 393rd Bomb
Squadron at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri.
Deployed against these Blue Forces
were the resident Red Forces under
the command of the 57th Adversary
Tactics Group. Most visible of these
were the boldly painted F‐16s and F‐
15s of the 64th Aggressor Squadron.
This was the penultimate Flag for the
last six operational Aggressor Eagles,
which are scheduled to be retired at
the end of March, 2015. The nature of
the exercise has grown significantly
beyond the original tactical dogfighting
exercises and other units, such as the
547th Intelligence Squadron, provide
improved tactics and present threats
of a different nature, such as cyber,
space or informational. “From an intel‐
ligence perspective, I'm studying things
that are real world and in our shop
we're putting together the Lego pieces
so the guys and gals can come here
and fight the war they might be doing
for real overseas,” explained 1st Lieu‐
tenant Paul Heins, the Deputy Targets
Chief with the 547th Intel Squadron at
Nellis. “We train towards future wars.
We take what we know about our ad‐
versaries at large as a coalition, we
study their tactics, and then we fight
against it. It’s a dynamic planning cycle.
We’re making changes to Red Flag
right now. If the operator sees some‐
thing that is within our capability to
change for the next day we will do
that. We’re constantly working to give
the warfighter the best [training] ex‐
perience.”
This expansion of the exercise’s scope
offers valuable insight to the partici‐
pants well beyond their specific duties.
"It's not just about the other fighter
aircraft in the air and the bombers, it's
also about the non‐kinetic effects that
you can get through space, through
cyber, through all these different fac‐
ets that we're learning are out there
that we might actually be able to use,"