Ready for China: RAF joins US & Australia for largest Allied air exercise ever

The bright lights and glitz of Las Vegas, but while revelers risk their dollars on the city's outskirts, war fighters take to the skies by night and day, American, Australian and British crews undertake forays into the training

exercise

largest

air combat aircraft in the world. world, this is a red flag, my job is to train Coalition Air Forces against the most advanced adversary possible, it is probably the most demanding and challenging

exercise

from an aircrew perspective, it is very, very stressful and that is the objective of this enormous exercise that is carried out

ever

y year. but 2023 has been different, so let's find out why and today's missions are just beginning.

The red flag began almost half a century ago, when the US military realized since Vietnam that if pilots survived their first 10 missions, chances were they would have survived. the red flag of war was born to simulate those first 10 dangerous red flag of Ortiz the most realistic combat training exercise

ever

developed today the exercise is bigger than ever now there are three a year this is the red flag one and it is huge so this is the British flight line. We have all our typhoons lined up very well. Next to us are the Australians, they brought their four Growlers with them and beyond them are the USA, there are now about a hundred Jets here and this stretches for over a mile, although the target is still the.

Same thing, after years of looking east, attention is now focused on a new threat. The red flag scenarios during red flag 23 1 are 100% focused on the pacing challenge in China. We presented blue participants with both offensive and defensive counterattack problems in each training period. Participating now in the Grand Challenge is what Americans call the tyranny of the distance the task force's miles would need to cover just to get to the fight. They could also be operating over water, not land, and potentially fighting an enemy well equipped to meet the challenge. tyranny of distance have almost tripled the airspace in which they are training now stretches from Utah through Nevada to California and for the first time over the Pacific Ocean all the nations involved bring their own experience to the party and this problem of the distance means what the brits brought is key yesterday the day before yesterday at seven in the morning fixing hard Voyager is the RAF's air-to-air refueling tanker plane it's basically a civilian aircraft with some useful military adaptations it has two capsules underneath of the wings for refueling bus aircraft with an additional center hose for larger aircraft.

It can refuel two planes at once, delivering half a ton of fuel per minute and each plane takes about five minutes to refuel. It complements the American tanker, the KC-135, which uses a single rigid boom and is better for Refueling bombers on larger planes. It has a hose that's about 99 feet long and you'll see the basket stuck in there and it will come out behind the plane and it just goes away. It will sit in the airflow here and then the receivers will come up with their probes and then their job is to get their probes into the basket at about 400 miles per hour.

Voyager is effectively a force multiplier that allows planes to stay in the air longer. So it's central to this year's red flag, so though for all intents and purposes, this looks exactly like a civilian. airliner we are essentially an international airborne fuel station standing at the edge of the training area

ready

waiting to refuel British Typhoons, US Marine Corps F-35bs and the Royal Australian Air Force and the US Navy Growlers. Well, what are we waiting for? um okay so we're going to wait for a couple of typhoons in the next two minutes and then the second way we have some F-35s busy it's so busy I mean these guys are so busy so I try to don't do it. to talk to them they need to concentrate yes, they do it is not long before the first customers arrive at the front the mission systems operator controls the refueling today Voyager has 50 tons of fuel to deliver to 18 planes in about 90 minutes meanwhile the job of the Pilots must fly straight and level, very still, very stable, very predictable.

We don't want them to get disoriented while they're around the plane. We want to provide them with a nice, stable platform to come and get fuel, as you can imagine. Like a big flexible hose, it bounces around if there's bumps or turbulence, so it's hard enough, so anything we can do to make it easy for them, the Jets will come and form up on the left wing and that's kind of it. to the waiting area and then two by two they will come one behind each hose, then they will connect when they have the green light so they can take their fuel when they are done, they will disconnect and then they will head to the right wing, which is kind of waiting area before they leave, then they will climb above us and return to their fight.

Voyager is a very critical enabling asset, what we call a high value asset, so what we tend to do is make sure that Voyager is protected, we don't want Voyager to be close to enemy forces and always we want to have blue force fighters between Voyager and the enemy, so we would have fighters protecting Voyager. We would have fighters at the front fighting enemy forces. enemy and we would probably also have fighters on Voyager refueling while we brought in our typhoons and tankers, the Australians came with their Growlers. The EA-18G Growler is an electronic attack aircraft designed to encrypt enemy communications.

It's a pretty important exercise for Australia. for us it really includes packaging up to 60 or 70 aircraft to accomplish various mission sets. Our task or our mission set is really to improve the survivability mentality of the joint force and the coalition and we do that by denying, degrading or deceiving intermittent communications. or our team to make sure that typhoons, for example, can fulfill their stated mission. It is not just a scenario that tests visitors. The cold winter desert has its challenges too. Well, he's used to being in such a warm climate and now it's really cold. We thought, oh, what is he going to do now?

We always find that it's great. They may seem simple, but in reality they are not. There is so much design in them and so much information that you have to learn. about it so they can fix it or fix it as the Allies evolve, the enemy does too to keep Coalition forces on their toes. Nellis Air Base has a resident evil unit, their job is to provide red air, in other words to be among the friendly blue forces and they did everything they could to disrupt them last year, they became even more deadly when they were joined by a new F-35 squadron led by Commander Norto.

This is your first international red flag. It is a challenge to some extent. Think that the baseline that you start and that started your best fighter pilot that you can be is the absolute baseline, whether from the enemy or the good side, but now you have to choose yourself from the mentality of the enemy that are you. When you press the missile launch button, the simulated missile launch button at your friends right there, you can't be afraid to do it because any hesitation in doing so means that your friend is not getting the best training that he could get on another day. another mission, they need to be tight so that when you're pulling G on the plane, these pants puff up and tighten, they squeeze blood into your torso and into your brain so you don't lose consciousness in high conditions.

G, they need to be well adjusted, after a few weeks in America, there is a challenge to move quickly, you have to prepare to go out to SRT, you certainly need to put yourself in the right frame. mental, um, they also have rock music here, which also helps to get in the mood, clear the mind, yeah, you have kind of a big party mentality here, so, um, there are so many people watching too, um , but it's not like that. We want to disappoint each other and we want to give the best performance possible, so I definitely, definitely still get nervous about the rivalry with the Americans and Australians, no, no, the Black Hawks provide cover as the B-52 strategic bombers leave first . then the tankers and fast Jets follow, there seems to be little doubt among the 3000 or so deployed that the red flag is working, you said you'd only died once, hey yeah, so it was my first mission.

I was surprised by the aggressiveness of our adversary. I haven't died since, so I learned my lesson. I like to think I was the last one to get gas from my flight and I look to my left and I see four typhoons there to my left you just know it was a surreal moment I like I couldn't believe I like any choice in my life that I brought to that moment it was it was beautiful to see I feel exactly where I want to be you know, it feels good to be here as the red flag comes to an end Coalition forces prepare for the long journey home and Nevada looks forward to future red flags that they can be realized entirely in the forces of panic at sea.

News from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel.