Aggressor pilots: Paid to play the villain

EIELSON AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska — It’s the perfect job for anybody who likes the Joker better than Batman or cheers for Tom instead of Jerry.

The pilots of the 18th Aggressor Squadron here get to play the villain.

Chinese flags and a portrait of Russia’s Lenin that adorn the 18th’s headquarters put the pilots in the enemy’s mindset. Even the squadron gym looks like the one Drago trained in before his fight against Rocky in “Rocky IV.”

But the role that the airmen play — professional adversary — isn’t one for the comic books, Saturday morning cartoons or movies. It’s deadly serious and one the Air Force continues to develop — even 20 years after the end of the Cold War.

Aggressors date to the fall of 1972, when the Air Force decided the best way to counter its high combat loss rate in Vietnam was to sharpen its pilots’ air-to-air skills.

Today, the Air Force has nine aggressor squadrons. The Pacific Air Forces controls the 18th Aggressor Squadron. The Kansas Air Guard oversees the 177th Information Aggressor Squadron at McConnell Air Force Base, Kan. The remaining seven make up the 57th Adversary Tactics Group, commanded by Col. Andy Toth. Of those squadrons, six are at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., the 57th’s headquarters. The seventh, the 527th Space Aggressor Squadron, is at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo.

Their sole mission is to know how the attacker thinks and acts — and to teach other fighter squadrons to respond. They travel to individual units or train in the different air exercises such as Red Flag-Nellis, Red Flag-Alaska and Cope North to demonstrate new tactics and vulnerabilities.

Units, even ones close by like the two F-22 squadrons based here, want to train more with the aggressors.

“We are lucky because the 18th is right here, but I still wish we had more time with them,” said Lt. Col. Joe Kunkel, the director of operations of the 525th Fighter Squadron, one of two F-22 units at Eielson.

“Any time we can get with them is extremely important,” he said. “We just can’t do what they do in regards to mimicking the enemy.”

Aggressor pilots learn about adversaries from the different intelligence agencies. The 18th travels from Alaska to the nation’s capital to sit down with officials from the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“We stop at each of the agencies and just learn,” said Maj. David Michaud, the 18th’s vice commander. “Then, we incorporate that into what we teach the units we work with.”

In the days that the U.S. considered the Soviet Union its biggest threat, four squadrons of airmen flew Russian-made MiG-21s or Su-27 fighters to lend authenticity to their job. Now, Toth’s squadrons fly Boeing’s F-16s and General Dynamics’ F-15s given special paint jobs and modified with sensors and radars to look like Russian, Chinese or North Korean fighters.

The 18th flies F-16s painted in “arctic camouflage” — black, gray and white tiger stripes. The other two flying aggressor squadrons — the 64th and 65th at Nellis — fly F-16s and F-15s in shades of muted blues and drab greens.

“It just cost too much,” Michaud said of flying the foreign planes. “It would be really great if we could do that again, but it just isn’t realistic.”

Modern-day war
Fighting two wars in the last eight years against nontraditional enemies has forced Air Force aggressors to adapt their training.

“We obviously recognize how war has changed,” Michaud said, “and we have adapted with it when it was necessary.”

Pilots still keep their air-to-air skills sharp against advanced fighter maneuvers or surface-to-air missiles but now learn how to protect their aircraft from electronic attacks as well, he said.

Most nations, for example, can’t afford to buy a fifth-generation fighter equal to the Air Force’s F-22 so they opt to counter the high-tech jets with relatively cheap jammers and advanced infrared systems.

The small investment is a wise one because radar is what sets the F-22 apart from other aircraft. An F-22 pilot can see an enemy jet before it can see him. If the adversary jams the F-22’s radar, the Raptor still has its superior thrust vectoring, but the fight becomes much more fair.

“We have seen over the past three years that it has become an increasing priority, and we get even more and more requests to bring electronic warfare capabilities to the fight,” said Maj. Norm Johnsen, a pilot in the 57th Adversary Tactics Support Squadron.

Nations — big and small — and even non-state groups such as the Taliban recognize electronic warfare as an equalizer because of its reasonable price tag, said Norm Balchunas, director of operations for the Washington-based Electronic Warfare and Information Operations Association.

“Our adversaries have caught up to us [in electronic warfare technology],” he said.

Bad boys
For aggressor pilots, a good day is when they all get shot down.

And the aggressor pilots don’t get upset about losing because it means the fighter pilots know what they’re doing.

“We are big boys about it,” Michaud said. “I don’t mind dying every day because that means we are doing our job.”

Non-U.S. pilots also fly in the aggressor squadrons.

“We just had a Canadian pilot who really gave us an outside look and some more experience that’s really valuable to the fighter squadrons we work with,” Michaud said.

An F-16 driver for 14 years, Michaud considers himself to be a better pilot because of his time as an aggressor.

“I know more about the threat because that is my job. I then take what I learn and teach what the threat is to the blue forces. It’s made me a better pilot because it has forced me to learn as much as I can about that threat,” he said as he pointed to a picture of an Su-30 flown by the Russians.

Toth, the 57th group commander, agreed.

“Anytime anyone comes to an aggressor squadron he can look at it as a career-broadening opportunity, where you can become an expert on the adversary,” he said.