Why Red Flag exercises are not indicative of aircraft performance

[rrohde]

Interesting article here: Why Red Flag exercises are not indicative of aircraft performance

[Yurgon]

Interesting article indeed!

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the main purpose of Red Flag to train pilots and aircrews under realistic conditions so that they gain experience and literally "survive" their first couple of combat sorties?

 

I'm sure there's all kinds of number crunching going on afterwards, saying just how great everything went from this and that perspective, but whether or not these figures are actually useful doesn't matter as much as the experience gained by all participants IMO.

 

In other words, when someone points out that a flight of Raptors won Red Flag single-handedly, we already know that's not what it was all about. :smartass:

[garrya]

Interesting article here: Why Red Flag exercises are not indicative of aircraft performance

 

Factually wrong article :noexpression: with many hole

ex he said USAF aircraft can't jam but most USAF aircraft can carry jamming pod : ALQ-131 , ALQ-184 , there are delicate jamming platform as well EA-6B , EA-18G

He said no USA aircraft have IRST except F-35 but actually targeting pod like ATFLIR , SNIPER-XR , LITENING all have air to air IR tracking functions

 

 

 

And written by Picard ? :megalol: , that guys have the reputation of making up random formula and posting nonsense to pump up his favorite aircraft (Rafale ):megalol:

Edited December 31, 2015 by garrya

[FUgaijin]

I quit reading when he says the US uses T-38s as aggressors. Thats hard to believe because both Eilson and Nellis use camod up F-16s.

[Sweep]

The US DOES use T-38s as aggressors though.

 

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXmDj3mFrXQ[/ame]

 

IIRC, Langley operates T-38s to make Raptor salad.

 

P.S.: Happy New Year.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Sweep

[LuSi_6]

well, Red Flag is not to evaluate aircraft performance, it's a large scale excercise with lots of ROE and restrictions. It's no free for all dogfight deathmatch

[garrya]

I quit reading when he says the US uses T-38s as aggressors. Thats hard to believe because both Eilson and Nellis use camod up F-16s.

 

In red team vs blue team combat there are variety of aircraft used as aggressor from T-38 to A-4 to F-16 , F-15 , the F-22 done exercise with Typhoon too

[SDsc0rch]

the most interesting excerpt in the article is right here...

 

while no missile in the world achieved Pk above 70% against literally defenseless opponents (70% is value for visual-range IR missiles in Falklands against opponent that did not have a countermeasures and did not attempt to evade the missile, trying instead to break missile lock by no longer useful tactics; BVR missiles never achieved more than 50% Pk in same conditions) ... However, against capable aircraft, BVR missile Pk can be expected to be less than 10%; with Pk in actual BVR combat being no more than 3-7%

 

 

all his slide-ruling and assumptions and "figgering"...... eh, i can take'm or leave'm (with mostly the needle pointing over to "leave'm")

 

but those low real-world Pks are something to keep in mind if you want to have a realistic simulation in DCS

 

note - in vietnam, if US pilots were able to visually pick up the bandits before the bandit fired, we would kill him 2/3 of the time - even if we were defensive initially (and we usually were - they made good use of GCI)

 

if the bandit got in un-observed ----- 90% kill rate

 

and that's how it goes generally ----- killing an aware bandit is very difficult

 

even if we assume missiles/weapons systems/etc are all working *perfectly* its still hard to kill a bandit who knows you are there

 

but.. we don't live in that world - and weapons systems are NOT perfect - this fact drives Pks lower

 

for DCS purposes, we should expect to see Pks on the lower side

[Pilotasso]

I have doubts about that text. They have no scientific basis to come up with those numbers whatsoever. The article should be taken as someone's opinion and nothing more than that.

[LFCChameleon_Silk]

suspiciously flat numbers, facts wrong... all thats missing is the Nigerian prince to round out this story.

[wilky510]

As Garrya has pointed out Picard has a certain agenda. He likes IRST's to the bone. I saw him quoting an IRST spotting a stealth aircraft at 120 miles with no factual data to back it up, other than "I saw it". He likes the Rafale alot, and has some wonky claims!

[Basher54321]

I have doubts about that text. They have no scientific basis to come up with those numbers whatsoever. The article should be taken as someone's opinion and nothing more than that.

 

Picard is an amateur blogger - every article he has ever written shows total lack of understanding in even the basics.

 

I would hope for his sake it is agenda - however judging by his ramblings on other forums he might just be totally clueless.

[Emu]

And written by Picard ? :megalol:

You beat me to it.:D

[Emu]

I quit reading when he says the US uses T-38s as aggressors. Thats hard to believe because both Eilson and Nellis use camod up F-16s.

 

That bit was actually correct, there's a picture of one with Raptor kill markings somewhere.

 

Edited January 2, 2016 by Emu

[SDsc0rch]

that's hilarious - LOL

[jvanhoog]

+1

[carlos.gh]

I am scratching my head to understand where those victories have been painted. XD

[gavagai]

I am scratching my head to understand where those victories have been painted. XD

 

There are 3 photos there, not 2. It looks like they're painted on one of the landing gear doors.

[steele6]

the point picard is saying is:

 

1) the scenarios are set up so that the assumed disposition of forces are wrong F-22's should be more outnumbered

 

2) the probability of kills of the missiles used are extremely high, something that does not accord with history, resulting in excess kills for the modern weapons.

 

3) Red Flag seems very scripted eg: dont use this tactic! only use that tactic etc..

[blkspade]

13 Raptors compared to 2 Eagles doesn't bode well for the eventual Eagle replacement. I wonder if those represent unique pilot "kills".

[Emu]

There are 3 photos there, not 2. It looks like they're painted on one of the landing gear doors.

Yep, on the inside.

 

that's hilarious - LOL

In Top Gun terms, it's what happens when someone like Viper goes up against Hollywood.

Edited January 4, 2016 by Emu

[Sweep]

13 Raptors compared to 2 Eagles doesn't bode well for the eventual Eagle replacement. I wonder if those represent unique pilot "kills".

 

It's probably because they train against Raptors a lot more than with Eagles or anything else...

 

Or IDK, maybe the -22 really is a Craptor. :megalol:

[Basher54321]

the point picard is saying is:

 

 

 

The point is, he is in no position to be saying anything - and setting up a blog site to try and make that total rubbish look legit is very suspicious.

 

His somewhat ridiculous points seem very similar to the same misconceptions Sprey has intentionally been peddling for anti military groups such as POGO over the years.

 

Picard has the same theme e.g. display total ignorance and totally Ignore ALL contradicting evidence - it just has to be good enough to fool a number of people

[OutOnTheOP]

13 Raptors compared to 2 Eagles doesn't bode well for the eventual Eagle replacement. I wonder if those represent unique pilot "kills".

 

Or maybe they've conducted 500 fights against Raptors, but only 2 against Eagles. Or they fight the Eagles in "fair" fights starting at BVR, but only fight the Raptors in contrived start-in-WVR fights. Or even start the fight behind the Raptor. Training exercises are rarely constructed to see who's best; they're designed to force the training audience to adapt to and overcome difficult situations. They're often weighted heavily against the training audience.

 

In short, context matters.

[carlos.gh]

There are 3 photos there, not 2. It looks like they're painted on one of the landing gear doors.

 

My brain was building a new aerodinamic setup instead of seeing the different pìctures XD