7 ms·

> Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to fiel

by ardy42 7y ago

> Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat. The thing that I don't get is why would the US hire him to provide adversary aircraft that it already operates? I could totally understand them hiring someone who operated a bunch of ex-Russian aircraft, but if they wanted F-18s why not just call the Navy?

ceejayoz 7y ago
"Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine. The aircraft may also be modified to perform more like the aircraft they're simulating. They're even painted differently, like this F-15 in Russian-style camo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/F-15E-80-0010-64as-nellis.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/F-15E-80...
- ardy42 7y ago
  > "Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine. Yeah, but doesn't the US have those too, at Top Gun and Red Flag? I'd think that Top Gun would have aggressor squadron pilots qualified to fly F-18s.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - quaquaqua1 7y ago
    It sounds like it's just a way for the Navy to blow taxpayer money. Look at how our government managed a virus. Now imagine WW3.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      That is the purpose of the Navy, just like all the rest of USA armed forces. They haven't won a war in my parents' lifetimes, but just think of all the trillions of dollars that have gone to armaments manufacturers!
      - HideousKojima 7y ago
        We lost to Grenada?
        secfirstmd 7y ago
        And Iraq 1991, or Serbia/Kosovo(ish)
        jessaustin 7y ago
        We never stopped fighting in Iraq, so in what sense did we "win"? More to the point, we never left Saudi, which was the direct cause of 9/11, which also was not a win. Except, of course, for the armaments manufacturers. For them, 9/11 was most definitely a win. "Serbia/Kosovo(ish)", whatever specifically is meant by that, is about like "Grenada" mentioned above. When you grasp at such tiny straws, you confirm the point rather than refute it: USA military exists to funnel money to weapons manufacturers and their employees in politics and media while killing mostly innocent, mostly brown people.
        secfirstmd 7y ago
        The strategic objectives of the two main phases of those conflicts was achieved. Remove Saddam from Kuwait and remove Serbia enough to stabilise Kosovo. I don't disagree about the Saudis and US military industrial complex but that wasn't the point I was making
        o-__-o 7y ago
        How did we lose to Grenada?
    - TomMckenny 7y ago
      The story is that tax payers gave his company money to buy our F18s from us so that he can accumulate a force of enemy aircraft. His company will also train pilots specifically as the enemy would. And while he will do this at a considerable profit, it will theoretically be better executed per dollar that the military doing it in a separate division. Another post claims he will generate sorties more than twice as efficiently. So the above is either true or false. If it is false and the contract costs taxpayers more than the military would then, as you suspect, it is entirely a pork-barrel waste of money. The fact that other nations with highly regraded military don't do this theoretical efficiency boost strongly supports this. If it is true and the contractor is somehow more efficient, then that is even more worrisome. Scarier still is that it is taken as an inevitable state of affairs and no one seems concerned about it. That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI supports this, even though that would be conspicuous pork-barrel in it's own right. Same with the fact the sale was F18s. Either the enemy has them or not. In one case it's pork-barrel, in the other case the US has somehow sold fighters to an enemy.
      - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        > That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI Hadn't heard of this. Apparently the US Navy are reverting an 'upgrade' to its destroyers which gave them a dangerously poor touchscreen-based helm control UI. The decision was made in the wake of a fatal collision with a civilian vessel in 2017. https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-11-us-navy-drops-touchscreen-controls-for-destroyers.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-11-us-navy-drops-touchscree... https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john-s-mccain-crash-ntsb-report-touchscreen-mechanical-controls https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john...
  - hindsightbias 7y ago
    Top Gun used a lot of planes, including -18 and F-16. There was a F-16N for awhile. Navy aggressor squadrons also fly F-5s and just bought some from the Swiss.
  - greedo 7y ago
    TOPGUN is pretty much gone now.
    - projektfu 7y ago
      By that you mean it's merged into NSAWC? Because there's still a TOPGUN course.
      - greedo 7y ago
        I meant culturally in the USN. TOPGUN used to be all air to air, all day. Now it's strike fighter training, E2 training, as well as the classical A2A. This may be better in some ways since the entire goal of TOPGUN was to train the trainers who would go back to their squadrons and improve capabilities. And that role has changed dramatically since the 80's where being the best pilot meant you might leave the Gulf of Sidra alive. A2A combat hasn't been important for over 20 years. We'll need to reinvent it for the future I fear.
        projektfu 7y ago
        It seems Israel has a strong dogfighting capability, but who else right now?
        greedo 7y ago
        Israel is good in air combat, but I don't know how much of that is dogfighting anymore. Maybe the Brits, but the Eurofighter is more of an interceptor than a dogfighter. The French don't get much publicity, but arguably have the best military on the Continent.
  - VLM 7y ago
    Kind of. For various budgetary reasons and capex vs opex and stuff like that, the US only has two aggressor squadrons now, the 18th and 64th. The 65th shut down recently. We're kinda getting out of that business. Something quietly muttered about is we don't have the labor force anymore, so better off having our pilots in fighting squadrons instead of training squadrons. Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio, and cold war REFORGER war plan against the Soviets was to use our higher tech to hold back their larger numbers. We needed each of our F-14 to shoot down at least 7 of their Mig-21 to win WWIII in 1985, or at least to not lose too quickly. None of this has really been relevant since 1990 and drone and cruise missile tech and so forth make the whole concept pointless. So political bureaucracy rules of warfare are such that if you can't shut down an obsolete program directly, you can outsource it all on a contract that coincidentally will not be renewed in 2025 or whatever year. We're just never going to see future air combat where its a war of attrition between our small number of high tech F-14 tomcats vs a larger number of mig-21s. Put the money where it'll actually be used in the future, such as drones, cruise missiles, smart bombs, fancy AA and AG missiles, etc. The idea of training F-14 pilots to do air combat maneuvering using guns and 70s performance missiles against a number of Mig-21 is VERY 1980s. Or future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations. Sure at a thousand bucks per drone plus COTS grenade, thats a quarter mil per day to deny air operations... now is that quarter mil cheap or expensive? Compared to the damage a functioning air force base can do to an opponent, that's cheap. Or they'll build $100 cloud steerable laser pointers and deploy them randomly across the land by the thousands to lase the eyes and sensors of every vehicle in the air that's not one of theirs. They'll win that war of attrition if they deploy 10K semi-autonomous weapons that each cost $1000 and we only have 1K ATG missiles in theater which cost $100K each, either way they win. Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now.
    - ardy42 7y ago
      > Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio > Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now. I disagree. Wasn't part of the problem in the 60s that the generals were training to win the next war, which they though would be fought at stand-off distances with guided missiles (i.e. suicide drones) carried by planes with little need to maneuver [1] [2]? It turned out they were wrong, and had to subsequently rethink their tactics and procurement requirements, which led to stuff like Top Gun and the F-14. > [Our] future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations... [more speculation about drone swarm warfare]... Betting that some new, hot technology will obsolete old techniques can be a bad bet that puts you in a bad situation. I don't think quadcopter drones are going to be anything near the game changer you think they'll be. For instance: if you're close enough to launch a swarm attack like you describe, you're several times closer than you need to be to launch an artillery bombardment: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/16/new-army-artillery-doubles-attack-range-outguns-russian-equivalent.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/16/new-army-arti... (quickest google result): > Existing 155mm artillery rounds, fired with precision from mobile and self-propelled howitzer platforms, have a maximum range of about 30 kilometers; the new ERCA weapon is designed to hit ranges greater than 70 kilometers, Army developers said. https://www.dronesglobe.com/guide/long-range-drones/#sec3 https://www.dronesglobe.com/guide/long-range-drones/#sec3 (another quicky google result). The longest-range drone listed is: > 2.DJI Mavic 2 Pro 4K [battery:] 30min [range:] 8km I wouldn't expect a cheap military quadcopter swarm-member to have much better performance than a civilian one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II#Flight_characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer
voxic11 7y ago
I guess he uses a bunch of training, simulations and electronics to degrade the performance of the F-18s so they match the characteristics of various "enemy" aircraft types. Its hard to come by spare parts for Russian aircraft so emulating them by degrading the performance of American aircraft seems like its maybe more cost effective.
- dTal 7y ago
  I question the tacit assumption that all "enemy" aircraft types they might wish to simulate will have worse performance than an F-18.
parsimo2010 7y ago
It's often more expensive to create specialized training capabilities in house. Contractors have an advantage with both equipment and personnel costs. A contractor can maintain their jets however they want as long as it's safe and they can meet their contract requirements. The contract maintainers can stay at their job as long as they want. The USN and USAF maintainers move every few years and have pretty good retirement benefits (which used to be better but are still better than what most private companies give), and have to get lots of additional training and all that needs to be paid for. A contractor is still supposed to follow all the safety regulations, but contractors seem to be able to generate sorties at rates that military units couldn't manage even with double the manpower. Contractor pilots are paid strictly to fly. Naval aviators and USAF pilots are both subject to "up or out" policies, where officers that aren't promoted are told to leave. This means military pilots have to serve as staff officers to keep themselves promotable. During a staff tour they either quit flying or they fly less, which kind of wastes the money spent on training them. There are good reasons for requiring this (and some good arguments against it), but the bottom line is that contractors don't have to worry about it and can operate cheaper because they aren't wasting 20% of their personnel budget with a fighter pilot working behind a desk.
- lostmsu 7y ago
  It might also be beneficial to have a training combatant, who is not in the same chain of command as the trainees. Gives external perspective, and reduces the chance of collusion to show "good results" if done right.
  - throw1234651234 7y ago
    I think this is key.
  - parsimo2010 7y ago
    This isn't an advantage of contractors since the military aggressor units already do a great job. They are a separate unit and do all their tactical planning separately. They attend the mass safety briefings before a mission and they provide training feedback during debriefs, but they are serious about maintaining the integrity of their training. There is no incentive to cheat- you don't win a prize for a victory and cheating might result in one of your friends dying if they had to go to war with inadequate training. There are several reasons a pilot can lose $5 during a mission but they can't win it back by cheating. I once asked a pilot after a test mission, "if you're pretty sure they're going to do [tactic X] why don't you do [tactic that works great against tactic X]?" His response was that his mission isn't to win, it's to provide the most authentic simulation of an enemy as he can. If they don't think an enemy pilot would do something, they won't do it- even if they know they could gain an advantage using inside knowledge.
ezconnect 7y ago
No profit on just calling the Navy.
mountainboot 7y ago
Corruption

by ardy42 7y ago

ceejayoz 7y ago

"Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine. The aircraft may also be modified to perform more like the aircraft they're simulating. They're even painted differently, like this F-15 in Russian-style camo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/F-15E-80-0010-64as-nellis.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/F-15E-80...

ardy42 7y ago
> "Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine. Yeah, but doesn't the US have those too, at Top Gun and Red Flag? I'd think that Top Gun would have aggressor squadron pilots qualified to fly F-18s.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  It sounds like it's just a way for the Navy to blow taxpayer money. Look at how our government managed a virus. Now imagine WW3.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    That is the purpose of the Navy, just like all the rest of USA armed forces. They haven't won a war in my parents' lifetimes, but just think of all the trillions of dollars that have gone to armaments manufacturers!
    - HideousKojima 7y ago
      We lost to Grenada?
      - secfirstmd 7y ago
        And Iraq 1991, or Serbia/Kosovo(ish)
        jessaustin 7y ago
        We never stopped fighting in Iraq, so in what sense did we "win"? More to the point, we never left Saudi, which was the direct cause of 9/11, which also was not a win. Except, of course, for the armaments manufacturers. For them, 9/11 was most definitely a win. "Serbia/Kosovo(ish)", whatever specifically is meant by that, is about like "Grenada" mentioned above. When you grasp at such tiny straws, you confirm the point rather than refute it: USA military exists to funnel money to weapons manufacturers and their employees in politics and media while killing mostly innocent, mostly brown people.
        secfirstmd 7y ago
        The strategic objectives of the two main phases of those conflicts was achieved. Remove Saddam from Kuwait and remove Serbia enough to stabilise Kosovo. I don't disagree about the Saudis and US military industrial complex but that wasn't the point I was making
      - o-__-o 7y ago
        How did we lose to Grenada?
  - TomMckenny 7y ago
    The story is that tax payers gave his company money to buy our F18s from us so that he can accumulate a force of enemy aircraft. His company will also train pilots specifically as the enemy would. And while he will do this at a considerable profit, it will theoretically be better executed per dollar that the military doing it in a separate division. Another post claims he will generate sorties more than twice as efficiently. So the above is either true or false. If it is false and the contract costs taxpayers more than the military would then, as you suspect, it is entirely a pork-barrel waste of money. The fact that other nations with highly regraded military don't do this theoretical efficiency boost strongly supports this. If it is true and the contractor is somehow more efficient, then that is even more worrisome. Scarier still is that it is taken as an inevitable state of affairs and no one seems concerned about it. That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI supports this, even though that would be conspicuous pork-barrel in it's own right. Same with the fact the sale was F18s. Either the enemy has them or not. In one case it's pork-barrel, in the other case the US has somehow sold fighters to an enemy.
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      > That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI Hadn't heard of this. Apparently the US Navy are reverting an 'upgrade' to its destroyers which gave them a dangerously poor touchscreen-based helm control UI. The decision was made in the wake of a fatal collision with a civilian vessel in 2017. https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-11-us-navy-drops-touchscreen-controls-for-destroyers.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-11-us-navy-drops-touchscree... https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john-s-mccain-crash-ntsb-report-touchscreen-mechanical-controls https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john...
- hindsightbias 7y ago
  Top Gun used a lot of planes, including -18 and F-16. There was a F-16N for awhile. Navy aggressor squadrons also fly F-5s and just bought some from the Swiss.
- greedo 7y ago
  TOPGUN is pretty much gone now.
  - projektfu 7y ago
    By that you mean it's merged into NSAWC? Because there's still a TOPGUN course.
    - greedo 7y ago
      I meant culturally in the USN. TOPGUN used to be all air to air, all day. Now it's strike fighter training, E2 training, as well as the classical A2A. This may be better in some ways since the entire goal of TOPGUN was to train the trainers who would go back to their squadrons and improve capabilities. And that role has changed dramatically since the 80's where being the best pilot meant you might leave the Gulf of Sidra alive. A2A combat hasn't been important for over 20 years. We'll need to reinvent it for the future I fear.
      - projektfu 7y ago
        It seems Israel has a strong dogfighting capability, but who else right now?
        greedo 7y ago
        Israel is good in air combat, but I don't know how much of that is dogfighting anymore. Maybe the Brits, but the Eurofighter is more of an interceptor than a dogfighter. The French don't get much publicity, but arguably have the best military on the Continent.
- VLM 7y ago
  Kind of. For various budgetary reasons and capex vs opex and stuff like that, the US only has two aggressor squadrons now, the 18th and 64th. The 65th shut down recently. We're kinda getting out of that business. Something quietly muttered about is we don't have the labor force anymore, so better off having our pilots in fighting squadrons instead of training squadrons. Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio, and cold war REFORGER war plan against the Soviets was to use our higher tech to hold back their larger numbers. We needed each of our F-14 to shoot down at least 7 of their Mig-21 to win WWIII in 1985, or at least to not lose too quickly. None of this has really been relevant since 1990 and drone and cruise missile tech and so forth make the whole concept pointless. So political bureaucracy rules of warfare are such that if you can't shut down an obsolete program directly, you can outsource it all on a contract that coincidentally will not be renewed in 2025 or whatever year. We're just never going to see future air combat where its a war of attrition between our small number of high tech F-14 tomcats vs a larger number of mig-21s. Put the money where it'll actually be used in the future, such as drones, cruise missiles, smart bombs, fancy AA and AG missiles, etc. The idea of training F-14 pilots to do air combat maneuvering using guns and 70s performance missiles against a number of Mig-21 is VERY 1980s. Or future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations. Sure at a thousand bucks per drone plus COTS grenade, thats a quarter mil per day to deny air operations... now is that quarter mil cheap or expensive? Compared to the damage a functioning air force base can do to an opponent, that's cheap. Or they'll build $100 cloud steerable laser pointers and deploy them randomly across the land by the thousands to lase the eyes and sensors of every vehicle in the air that's not one of theirs. They'll win that war of attrition if they deploy 10K semi-autonomous weapons that each cost $1000 and we only have 1K ATG missiles in theater which cost $100K each, either way they win. Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now.
  - ardy42 7y ago
    > Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio > Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now. I disagree. Wasn't part of the problem in the 60s that the generals were training to win the next war, which they though would be fought at stand-off distances with guided missiles (i.e. suicide drones) carried by planes with little need to maneuver [1] [2]? It turned out they were wrong, and had to subsequently rethink their tactics and procurement requirements, which led to stuff like Top Gun and the F-14. > [Our] future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations... [more speculation about drone swarm warfare]... Betting that some new, hot technology will obsolete old techniques can be a bad bet that puts you in a bad situation. I don't think quadcopter drones are going to be anything near the game changer you think they'll be. For instance: if you're close enough to launch a swarm attack like you describe, you're several times closer than you need to be to launch an artillery bombardment: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/16/new-army-artillery-doubles-attack-range-outguns-russian-equivalent.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/16/new-army-arti... (quickest google result): > Existing 155mm artillery rounds, fired with precision from mobile and self-propelled howitzer platforms, have a maximum range of about 30 kilometers; the new ERCA weapon is designed to hit ranges greater than 70 kilometers, Army developers said. https://www.dronesglobe.com/guide/long-range-drones/#sec3 https://www.dronesglobe.com/guide/long-range-drones/#sec3 (another quicky google result). The longest-range drone listed is: > 2.DJI Mavic 2 Pro 4K [battery:] 30min [range:] 8km I wouldn't expect a cheap military quadcopter swarm-member to have much better performance than a civilian one. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_II#Flight_characteristics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer

voxic11 7y ago

I guess he uses a bunch of training, simulations and electronics to degrade the performance of the F-18s so they match the characteristics of various "enemy" aircraft types. Its hard to come by spare parts for Russian aircraft so emulating them by degrading the performance of American aircraft seems like its maybe more cost effective.

dTal 7y ago
I question the tacit assumption that all "enemy" aircraft types they might wish to simulate will have worse performance than an F-18.

parsimo2010 7y ago

It's often more expensive to create specialized training capabilities in house. Contractors have an advantage with both equipment and personnel costs. A contractor can maintain their jets however they want as long as it's safe and they can meet their contract requirements. The contract maintainers can stay at their job as long as they want. The USN and USAF maintainers move every few years and have pretty good retirement benefits (which used to be better but are still better than what most private companies give), and have to get lots of additional training and all that needs to be paid for. A contractor is still supposed to follow all the safety regulations, but contractors seem to be able to generate sorties at rates that military units couldn't manage even with double the manpower. Contractor pilots are paid strictly to fly. Naval aviators and USAF pilots are both subject to "up or out" policies, where officers that aren't promoted are told to leave. This means military pilots have to serve as staff officers to keep themselves promotable. During a staff tour they either quit flying or they fly less, which kind of wastes the money spent on training them. There are good reasons for requiring this (and some good arguments against it), but the bottom line is that contractors don't have to worry about it and can operate cheaper because they aren't wasting 20% of their personnel budget with a fighter pilot working behind a desk.

lostmsu 7y ago
It might also be beneficial to have a training combatant, who is not in the same chain of command as the trainees. Gives external perspective, and reduces the chance of collusion to show "good results" if done right.
- throw1234651234 7y ago
  I think this is key.
- parsimo2010 7y ago
  This isn't an advantage of contractors since the military aggressor units already do a great job. They are a separate unit and do all their tactical planning separately. They attend the mass safety briefings before a mission and they provide training feedback during debriefs, but they are serious about maintaining the integrity of their training. There is no incentive to cheat- you don't win a prize for a victory and cheating might result in one of your friends dying if they had to go to war with inadequate training. There are several reasons a pilot can lose $5 during a mission but they can't win it back by cheating. I once asked a pilot after a test mission, "if you're pretty sure they're going to do [tactic X] why don't you do [tactic that works great against tactic X]?" His response was that his mission isn't to win, it's to provide the most authentic simulation of an enemy as he can. If they don't think an enemy pilot would do something, they won't do it- even if they know they could gain an advantage using inside knowledge.

ezconnect 7y ago

No profit on just calling the Navy.

mountainboot 7y ago

Corruption