65th Aggressor Squadron commander, Lt. Col. Brandon Nauta, and Lt. Col. Michael Albrecht, fly in a ... [+] two-ship F-35A Lightning II formation from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, June 9, 2022

Colonel Scott “Manual” Mills has been tasked with managing the reactivation of the Air Force’s 65th Aggressor Squadron (AGRS), the first “red air” squadron completely equipped with F-35s. It’s a difficult job at any time but even more difficult now that the USAF has ended private “red air” aggressor support at Nellis Air Force Base.

Nellis is home to the Air Force Weapons School, the USAF’s counterpart to the Navy’s Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center, popularly known as TOPGUN. The base also hosts the world-renowned joint-service, international Red Flag and other air combat exercises. It’s the home of the Air Force’s F-16-flying 64th AGRS and other air combat training units, what the folks at Nellis call “Aggressor Nation.”

Until the end of last month, Aggressor Nation was larger. The USAF squadrons which support the Weapons School and exercises as red air were augmented by aircraft and pilots from private adversary air (AdAir) services contractor Draken International.

In early April the Air Force notified Draken that it would not be renewing the $280 million AdAirII contract that the company had been fulfilling at Nellis since 2015 with a mix of radar-equipped A-4 Skyhawks, L-159 Honey badgers and Mirage F1s. The abrupt termination of the contract led to the lay-off of 247 Draken employees, including Draken aggressor pilots.

It has also led to the removal of what appears to be 30 to 40 red air jets from Nellis, according to a survey of secondary sources. Those jets flew “from 18 to 24 adversary air sorties a day at the base, supporting the USAF Weapons School, operational test missions, and Red Flag exercises,” according to a 2018 Air Force press release cited by Air Force Magazine.

The 57th Operations Group which manages the aggressor assets at Nellis maintains that the private contractor flew “between 10-16 sorties/day.” AdAir industry sources say the number was more like 20 sorties per day. Either way, the departure of Draken has opened up a big aggressor training hole for the Air Force to fill at Nellis.

In May, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-N.V.) questioned Lt. Gen. David S. Nahom, USAF deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, about ending the Draken contract, stressing her concern that there will be a red air gap at Nellis while the Air Force establishes the 65th AGRS and relies solely on organic USAF assets. Rosen asserted that 63% of aggressor flight hours at Nellis and the invaluable Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) were supplied by Draken and other AdAir contractors.

Rosen’s concern over the lack of aggressor capacity dovetails with what Lt. Col. Jan ‘Kuts’ Stahl, who was deputy commander of the 57th Operations Group at Nellis Air Force Base, told The Drive in 2020.

"The combined, fielded, aggressor forces we have here at Nellis are barely able to fill 70 or so percent of what our optimal demand for adversary forces is. That’s what was leading the USAF to look at alternative courses of action such as contract aggressors, as well as inviting visiting units from elsewhere to come and help us out.”

Stepping Up to 5th Generation Aggressors

The loss of red air capacity at Nellis isn’t a cause for concern, according to the Air Force. What the service is really doing is stepping up the quality of aggressor training to replicate threats U.S. aircraft face from peer adversaries, namely China. Only a squadron of F-35 Lightning IIs the Air Force maintains can simulate the threat and tactics its pilots may see from China’s 5th generation Chengdu J-20 "Mighty Dragon" fighter or Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57.

“As the China threat has stepped up, we have to step up our replication,” Lt. Gen. Nahom told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “And, what the contractor’s providing there at Nellis … is not what we need … for that high-end piece that we get at the NTTR … and JPARC (Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex).”

I put a series of questions to Air Combat Command (ACC) and Air Force headquarters about what the introduction of a 5th generation aggressor squadron would add, how much it would cost and how it would fill the void left in the absence of commercial AdAir. ACC and USAF HQ largely declined to answer them. So I turned to the practitioners at Nellis, to Colonel Scott Mills who took over command of the 57th Operations Group in the Spring of 2021.

The 57th Operations Group basically manages Nellis’ Aggressor Nation including the 64th AGRS, the 6th Weapons Squadron and other air-ground weapons coordination, maintenance, surface-to-air defense and cyber/information units.

57th Operations Group CO, Col. Scott "Manual" Mills is overseeing the build-up of the 65th Aggressor ... [+] Squadron at Nellis AFB though he will shortly rotate to another assignment.

A graduate of the Air Force Weapons School and F-35 pilot himself, Col. Mills has worked to make sure the new 65th AGRS is fully resourced with qualified people and airplanes. He repeatedly emphasized the need for high end aggressor training alongside red air capacity. “My role here is to determine the proper balance between those two.”

But red air airplanes and qualified aggressor pilots are not in plentiful supply at Nellis. “We have taken a capacity hit,” Mills acknowledges. “Will we meet the demand signal? Absolutely yes.”

When ACC commander, General Mark Kelly went to Nellis for the ceremony formally launching the new 65th AGRS a fortnight ago, he was technically reactivating the squadron which previously served in the red air adversary role flying F-15 Eagles starting in 2005. It was shuttered in 2014 - a move many criticized at the time.

Two F-35A Lightning IIs and two F-15E Strike Eagles fly in a formation after a combat training ... [+] mission in the Nevada Test and Training Range air space to signify the history of the 65th Aggressor Squadron and its reactivation at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, June 9, 2022.

The reestablished 65th has a new squadron commander, Lt. Col. Brandon Nauta, six assigned aggressor pilots and two F-35s. If that doesn’t sound like much, it appears to be even less considering that the two Lightnings are on loan from the Nellis-based 422nd Test & Evaluation (TES) squadron. Col. Mills says these will be formally turned over to the 65th in the Fall.

The Air Force actually announced the reactivation of the 65th in 2019, noting it would transfer nine non-combat capable F-35s from Eglin AFB, Florida following the arrival of replacement new-build Lightnings there. Three years on, Colonel Mills says those jets will start to come to Nellis in 2023/24. “The intent is to reach full operational capability in the fall of 2024.”

It’s a leisurely pace for standing up a capability that the Air Force says it can’t find elsewhere. In a way, it has though.

F-35 units from Elmendorf, Hill, and Eielson Air Force bases have often flown practice air to air sorties against other F-16/F-15/F-22-equipped units. While not formal aggressor vs. Blue Air engagements, these nonetheless have given USAF crews a taste of flying against 5th generation aircraft.

Nellis itself saw the introduction of F-35s into integrated red air in 2021 when Lightning pilots and aircraft participated in Red Flag 21-3 alongside F-16s from the 64th Aggressor Squadron. That exercise, which borrowed F-35s from Nellis’ 6th Weapons Squadron (part of the USAF Weapons School) illustrates a model the 65th will use for some time to come.

“If you think of only two 65th aircraft, you think how low a [marginal-addition] is this going to be?” Col. Mills says. “But what you don’t see is the large number of F-35s we have based here at Nellis AFB. Those support both the 422 TES and the 6th Weapons Squadron... We’re using those aircraft from the 6th to supplant our [two] F-35s in the 65th to still provide the necessary AdAir that we can.”

The words; “that we can” would seem to be important. According to Col. Mills the 65th is “looking at the likelihood” of providing eight F-35 sorties per day with the “capability of surging to more in high peak times” when a Red Flag exercise is running alongside the Weapons school syllabus for example.

The ability to surge to more sorties may hinge on what Mills calls the “Red Tax”. During Red Flag exercises for example, Nellis’ aggressor squadrons have asked participating Australian or British squadrons to dedicate a couple of their aircraft as red air assets, flying with USAF adversaries against Blue Force units. That model will extend to the 65th he suggests.

“It’ll be a little bit like a “pay to play system.” Units showing up for Weapons School, Red Flag or other exercises will have to donate a couple aircraft for red air.

“You’re going to come here, we’re going to take two of your aircraft for your go and we’re going to put them on the red side.” Whether that means the jets in question would be flown by 65th or 64th aggressor pilots isn’t clear but USAF wing and squadron commanders sending their planes and people to Nellis for training may have to either plan to send additional jets or have fewer Blue air jets/crews on hand for training.

Even if that bumps the number of sorties reached with organic Air Force red air, it won’t likely replace the 10-16 or 20-plus sorties that Draken flew daily depending on whose numbers one accepts. Some of those were even flown well away from Nellis and the NTTR, providing “local red air” as far afield as Luke AFB in Arizona or Hill AFB in Utah.

It’s also unclear whether red air capacity will be significantly expanded upon when the 65th is fully constituted. It seems unlikely that the Air Force’s “workarounds” can plug a year-plus deficit in aggressor training or a longer lasting hole in adversary training support.

The Air Force will likewise be consuming the service life of expensive active-duty aircraft, the very thing it sought to avoid by hiring contract red air.

When its full complement of airplanes is finally in hand, the 65th’s jets won’t be the latest, greatest F-35s. The non-combat coded Lightnings from Eglin are early software-block F-35s used for pilot training without the array of capabilities that current Block 3 and upcoming Block 4 jets have.

Aggressor Nation F-35s with aggressor pilots trained in adversary tactics will effectively replicate 5th generation adversary aircraft despite not having the “exquisite” capabilities that front-line Lightnings from Luke AFB or Elmendorf AFB have shown their USAF peers Col. Mills says.

“We were flying F-35 pilots against other F-35 pilots pretending to represent threats. They were using full U.S. capabilities and just fighting 1v1, 4v4 or whatever the numbers were. But they weren’t using capabilities that truly represent the threat that’s out there. We are training a professional aggressor force that is specifically trained academically and tactically to represent adversary forces.”

Lt. Col. Brandon Nauta, 65th Aggressor Squadron commander, performs pre-flight checks before ... [+] participating in an inaugural mission as a 65th Aggressor pilot at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, June 9, 2022.

That has always been the aggressor format, a reflection of flying-like-the-enemy-fights rather than flying the most capable aircraft, something the Air Force has done with F-5s and older Soviet fighters. Their dissimilarity to the majority of USAF front line fighters was regarded as a teachable element. But F-35s, and particularly F-16s, are familiar to Air Force fighter crews. They don’t present novelties in terms of dynamic performance or electronic/thermal signatures - unless they’re organic USAF red air.

“We have an incredible ability to confuse or spoof Blue Air capabilities,” Col. Mills affirms. The 64th’s F-16s and 65th’s F-35s can present tactical combat problems that student and line-squadron pilots showing up at Nellis have never seen before. They can do this Mills says thanks to the rapidly re-programmable portable electronic jamming pods they carry.

These portable jammer pods (variants of the AN/ALQ-188) make changing the electronic warfare (EW) picture that the aggressors present (enabling them to simulate Chinese or Russian systems) possible on short notice, something that can’t be quickly done with embedded systems in fighters including the F-35.

“Here we can carry around the pods and we can [re-program them] inside a week during an exercise,” Mills says. “We can see the [tactics] the Blue air presents to us and we can work to address weak points in their game plan.”

They’re useful tools those pods. According to my sources, Draken also carried them.

Doing so allowed the AdAir contractor to augment the numbers of aircraft that Air Force aggressors could put up. They could provide the same jamming picture, further challenging Weapons School students or Red Flag Blue air, accelerating their learning curves. And on a cost-per-flight-hour (CPFH) basis Draken’s jets were cheaper.

It’s widely known that the F-35 is expensive to fly. In 2019 the Lightning’s CPFH was put at $44,000. Lockheed has been working to get the cost down, seeking to hit $34,000 CPFH by 2024 though reports on its progress have been mixed. Sources I spoke to on background say the F-35 CPFH is actually in excess of $50,000.

An F-35A Lightning II assigned to the 65th Aggressor Squadron takes off with its new paint scheme ... [+] for its inaugural training mission as a 65th aggressor at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, June 9, 2022.

That means the 65th may provide fewer flight hours for a given pot of money than the F-16-flying 64th can or than private AdAir contractors could. As mentioned previously, headquarters Air Force and ACC would not answer questions about the relative cost of the 65th. These would include the cost and reliability of F-35 engines, which have limited the Lightning’s mission capable rates, a topic that came up before Congress in April.

“A leading driver of the F-35 not being mission capable has been engine issues,” said Diana Maurer, director of the General Accounting Office’s Defense Capabilities and Management. The limited supply of spare engines for F-35 Maurer asserted led to more than 9% of F-35 aircraft being inoperable in February.

The F-16 and other jet fighters she said have a supply of spare engines sufficient to meet their wartime needs and “almost always have an operable engine.” The 65th’s F-35s will presumably have older engines, bringing into question the squadron’s ability to consistently put metal in the sky. Even if it can, the cost of doing so remains an issue.

According to Col Mills, the 65th’s overall budget will be “similar” to other aggressor squadrons. He points out that the hours flown by any USAF fighter squadron per year are centrally managed by ACC. “The 65th AGRS will execute the same number of flying hours as similarly tasked squadrons,” Mills says.

If it does, the money will have to come from somewhere in the ACC budget, likely shorting other operational activity. It’s a tradeoff the Air Force appears dead-set on accepting - more money for fewer, arguably higher quality, aggressors - without explaining its logic.

But truly replicating the Chinese (or Russian) threat is as much a matter of simulating the large numbers of aircraft they will field as well as the character of the 5th gen airplanes/pilots they will commit to combat. With the departure of contract AdAir from Nellis, there will simply be fewer “bad guy” aircraft for the “good guys” to fight against. As Colonel Mills said himself, “Capacity is a strength all its own.”

That’s why observers in the AdAir business suspect that a private adversary provider with 4th generation fighters will ultimately return to Nellis in two to three years time.

The real Red Tax may be the diminished opportunity for Air Force (or Navy, Marine, Allied) pilots to train against qualified aggressor pilots and aircraft until the red air capacity that has been lost at Nellis is replaced.