Pilots’ Combat Class Strives for Taste of Realism

They have destroyed Scud missile launchers, won dogfights against enemy MIG-23s, and dodged repeated assaults from anti-aircraft artillery--so far without ever leaving the United States.

But the knowledge that they could be called at any moment to exchange their practice missions for combat runs has turned this long-scheduled Air Force pilot training session in the rugged Nevada desert into a life-or-death course in the real thing.

“You try to be the best you can, but until it is war, it is kind of a game,” said Lt. Jack Dennison, a 24-year-old F-16 pilot based in Georgia. “A lot of it comes home now. You may have to put your life at risk. You don’t want to get shot at, but at the same time, your friends are getting shot at.”

Nobody knows when the 150 pilots brought here from across the country and their support staff of more than 1,000 will be sent to the battle front--an uncertainty that has made for many restless nights here.

But, said Col. Edward P. Clements, assistant commander at Nellis, “when these guys walk in right now they have got fire in their eyes. Instead of it being a laboratory, it has become a chance for them to get their stuff together before having to go over there. Most of them are standing in line, saying, ‘Take me next!’ ”

The 57th Fighter Weapons Wing has been training pilots and support crews for 15 years at a vast military range of more than 3.5 million acres and 12,000 square miles of airspace in southern Nevada. About 5,700 pilots and air crews from around the world--including allies such as Saudi Arabia, Italy and Great Britain--take the two-week training sessions each year, as well as 14,000 support and maintenance crews.

Air Force officials estimate that tens of thousands of troops stationed in Saudi Arabia have participated in the training courses, which feature every type of aircraft in the Air Force. The program is designed to provide strike forces with realistic combat experience before they face an actual enemy.

“If we are going to train and experience combat losses, we would much rather do it here in practice so we can bring the guys back and explain to them what didn’t go well so they can go out and try it again the next day,” said Col. James D. Woodall, who oversees the training. “The intent is to take our inexperienced pilots and give them the experience we think they would see in the first 10 missions of combat so that we can get them over the hump.”

Before Iraq invaded Kuwait last Aug. 2, the training had been largely a primer course in fighting an imagined foe. The training course was geared toward a possible conflict in Europe with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, and was known as Red Flag, a reference to the Communist threat.

Today, the enemy is real, and the course has been renamed Desert Flag. The desert range--roughly the size of Kuwait--has been modified to include mock fuel storage tanks, missile launchers, fortified bunkers and other obstacles confronting Desert Storm pilots. So-called aggressor pilots--those permanently stationed at Nellis who act as the enemy during training missions--have modified their maneuvers and tactics to reflect those of Iraq’s air force.

“I have already had members of my staff over in Saudi Arabia . . . asking (pilots and officers) what they would like to have done before they got there to be better prepared,” Woodall said. “We have taken all of that information and remodeled and tweaked some of the things we do.”

On Friday, the skies above Nellis were cluttered with F-15s, F-15Es, F-16s, F-111s, AWACS and other aircraft as friendly “blue forces” engaged “red forces” in a mock battle on a cool, hazy day not unlike one at this time of year in the Persian Gulf.

The battle plans used in training are intended to replicate conditions in the Middle East, but they have been modified somewhat for practical concerns. Several F-15s, for example, were forced to take off to the north--against the prevailing wind--because they were loaded with live 2,000-pound bombs and could not fly over populated areas near Las Vegas.

Instructors said the exercises become progressively more difficult for the pilots throughout the two-week course, which marked its midpoint on Saturday. The goal, they said, is eventually to create “the highest stress situation possible”--the closest thing to combat.

Some pilots on Friday said their instructors had succeeded.

“Some guys get wrapped around the axle a little bit just because of the intensity of the environment,” said Maj. Charlie Charlton, who has been flying F-16s for 14 years and has participated in several Red Flag training sessions. “You have a lot of the equipment in the aircraft that is going off. You have lights and buzzers. Everybody is talking at one time. You have bandits that are trying to attack you. You’re trying to get to your target (and) you are trying to keep from hitting rocks. So it gets fairly intense.”

The pilots do not know how well they performed until a lengthy “debriefing” with their instructors after each sortie. Most of the simulated threats on the range are equipped with video equipment, which is used to evaluate and score each pilot and crewman. It is not unusual for a pilot to learn that he was “shot down” early in a mission that he believed he had successfully completed.

“It kind of leaves you with a little bit of a sick feeling,” one pilot said.

At the Nellis Fighter Weapons School, a prestigious institution where pilots are trained to become instructors, student Tom Tinsley said everyone gets shot down at some point in their training. The ultimate test, he said, will come on the battle front.

“I have trained for war all of my military career, and I guess until I see that first airplane trying to shoot me down or that first missile really coming at me, I can’t tell you how it is going to feel,” said Tinsley, a captain stationed in Phoenix. “You can’t really prepare everybody completely. You can try to educate people, but sometimes experience is the only way to learn.”