Red-hot success

“There was a real distinction between the day and night flying and the tactics that worked during the day didn’t necessarily work during the night because of the limitations of not being able to manoeuvre as aggressively,” FLTLT Campbell said.

He learnt “heaps” from the planning involved “because there were so many different support assets that we normally would not have in exercises like Jabiru or Crocodile”.

“The big thing that we get from Red Flag that we don’t get anywhere else is the ground threat,” FLTLT Campbell said. “We can get air threats anywhere in the world, but we can’t get that surface to air missile threat anywhere else. “I think it will really help us when we are running large force exercises like Pitch Black.

The good things will validate some of our tactics for things like weapons delivery and integrating with other packages as well.”

FLTLT Bowes said the US Air Force was much more adept and experienced at operating a Maintenance Operations Centre.

“The flip-side is that their organisation is so large, it is rare for a USAF technician to be multi-skilled or cross-trained and thus you have to deal with many more people than you would normally if you were operating with another RAAF unit or a RAAF ECSS or Base Support Wing,” he said.

“We also now better understand the capabilities of their Ground Support Equipment and have brought back some procedural publications that we can reference prior to a coalition deployment in future so that we go better prepared.”

Four mission commander opportunities were given to F/A-18 and F-111 crew members. GPCAPT Henman said this responsibility was only offered to the most competent crews and only a relative few participants on any given Red Flag were given the chance.

Mission commanders had difficult coordination and deconfliction challenges in a hostile electronic warfare and surface to air missile (SAM) target area. Mission planning was always done at a high-risk level, which meant crews had to plan to press on to the target despite significant remaining threats. Targets included trains, armoured vehicles, industrial complexes, radars, SAM sites, convoys, railways, bridges and airfields.

Aircrew could practise all sorts of tactical warfare – offensive counter-air, interdiction, suppression of enemy air defences, command and control, combat search and rescue, tactical airlift and air-to-air refuelling.

They dropped laser-guided training rounds and practice bombs and could watch a video “through the eyes” of the SAM site that had engaged them less than an hour before, then talk to an F16 pilot that had tried to target them.

FLTLT Campbell said the hairs on his neck stood up when he saw the radar warning system light up about an SA-2 threat and flew close enough to the systems to see them outside.

“It’s a huge difference and it means you have to prioritise what you do,” he said. “It’s all well and good to pretend you have something out there looking at you, but it’s a completely different thing to have it locking you up and to see if your tactics works against it.

It was awesome because you could see how if you were very aggressive, you might defeat the missile, but miss the target.”

GPCAPT Henman was proud to see maintenance and operations from two different ACG flying squadrons combine to present a professional and highly effective fast-jet presence.

He said the Australians fitted seamlessly into a highly complex and challenging exercise with UK and US forces “as though we had been doing it regularly for years”.

He said the F/A-18s – making their debut at Red Flag – and the F-111s performed “very well”.

Red hot

.