How To Win In A Dogfight: Stories From A Pilot Who Flew F-16s And MiGs

Lt. Col. Fred "Spanky" Clifton is one of the most experienced aggressor pilots ever, having flown the F-15, F-5, F-16 and the notorious MiG-29. He's been in dogfights with pretty much every fighter out there and is a graduate of the prestigious Fighter Weapons School. Now he's here to share his expertise with you.

How in the hell did you end up becoming the first USAF fighter pilot to fly the Russian-built MiG-29 Fulcrum as an exchange pilot?

First – a little (actually, a lot of) background. I earned a degree in aerospace engineering in 1979 and worked for Boeing in the Seattle area for two years after graduating from college. I had no real interest in joining the military at the time since I was an Army brat, growing up mostly at Fort Bliss, TX, and probably felt I had done my time. Plus, my dad told me if I ever joined the Army he'd kick my butt. Trust me Dad, an Army career was never on my radar screen. The Army doesn't have cool jets! I had a life-long fascination with airplanes and had built hundreds of plastic models, eventually moving on to u-control models and then radio-controlled models. I had always wanted to learn to fly myself, but could never afford it. One of my coworkers at Boeing told me about the Boeing Employees Flying Association (BEFA). BEFA had a range of different airplanes at affordable prices to members. For example, a Cessna 152 rented for $19 / hour, including fuel. An instructor was another $10 / hour. I joined BEFA and got my private pilot's license in 1981. The ink wasn't wet on my certificate when I took my girlfriend for a flight. I moved up to the Cessna 172 and thought this was the cat's meow. Flying bug smashers was fun, but it sure wasn't exciting. One Spring Saturday in 1981 another coworker called and asked if I wanted to go to the open house at McChord AFB. It was an abnormally sunny day in the Pacific Northwest, so away we went. Parked next to each other on the flightline was an F-15 and F-16. I was drawn to them like flies to a cow patty and I'm sure the two pilots were happy to have me quit bending their ears with questions. After a great show by the Canadian Snow Birds, I went and stood about 100 feet in front of the two fighters and thought to myself that I could fly one of those. The next week, I called the local recruiting office and talked to the USAF recruiter. We set up a meeting and upon entering the building the Navy recruiter told me that if the Air Force wouldn't take me, the Navy would. The Air Force recruiter must have had some issues with my appearance. I had shoulder-length hair and a way out-of-regs mustache. His first comment was that I had to have a college degree to become an Air Force pilot. Got one of those. First square checked off. He next commented that I can't be doing (or never had done) drugs. Hadn't gone there. Second square checked off, and the ball started rolling. Remember, this was 1981 and the start of the Reagan military build-up. If you met certain minimal criteria, and could fog a mirror, you were in. A couple of months after starting the application process, completing the testing requirements and passing a flight physical, I was awarded a slot in USAF Officer Training School (OTS) with guaranteed pilot training as a follow-on; assuming successful completion of OTS. Driving from Seattle to San Antonio, TX (OTS was at the Medina Annex of Lackland AFB in those days) the route took me past Hill AFB in Utah. As a drove by I saw a couple of F-16s in the traffic pattern. If you've ever been to the Salt Lake City area, you know how nice it is. Let's see – F-16s, mountains (skiing, hiking, etc). It must be a sign from God. I made up my mind right there I wanted to fly F-16s. I never got stationed at Hill. After finishing OTS, I started UPT at Laughlin AFB, TX in March 1982. There were 72 students who started the class (Reagan build-up once again). If I had any apprehensions about flight training, the biggest was aerobatics. Up until that time, I had never been a big fan of things like roller coasters and such and was afraid I'd get sick doing 'acro.' We started doing some mild acro on the second or third flight in theT-37 and I took to it like a fish takes to water. The next thing I was apprehensive about was instrument flying. I'd never done that. There are four things one needs to do simultaneously to

fly instruments – hold heading, hold altitude, hold airspeed and talk on the radio. In the first couple of T-37 instrument simulator sorties, I could do three, but not all four. During the second sim sortie, this hot-tempered first lieutenant instructor was banging on the glare shield and yelling at me over my errors. I'm not one to swear a whole lot, but I finally looked over at him and told him that if he'd STFU I'd do better. He did shut up and the sim went much better. He and I got along great after that and we ended up flying a lot together. I didn't bust any flights or sims in the T-37. The success continued into the T-38; although, I did bust one T-38 flight because I was slow getting the landing gear up as the flight lead during a formation take-off. As assignment time approached, I had been ranked as "fighter qualified" and filled out my assignment preference sheet (aka, Dream Sheet) with F-16 at the top and F-15 was number two. Every UPT class does its Assignment Night a little bit differently. We knew beforehand what aircraft would be in the assignment drop for my class. As far as fighters, there would be one F-16, two F-15s, one F-4 and three A-10s. We decided that on Assignment Night, each student would be called up and face the crowd with a projector screen to his or her back. The first picture projected on the screen was the student's first-choice aircraft, the second picture was what the class voted that the student would get and the final would be a picture of the USAF's (final) choice for you. As the students went up, one after the other, it was easy to narrow down the remaining available aircraft from the deck. Kind of like counting cards. It got down to the last two students, me and another, and the two last available jets were an F-15 and an F-16. I was called up first. As I stood in front of the crowd – first picture: F-16, second picture: F-16, third picture: F-15. My reaction? Are you effing kidding me? I had to gather myself quickly. This was actually a great deal and honor. 13 of my classmates had been selected for one of the ultimate USAF screw jobs, First-Assignment Instructor Pilot, and were staying at Laughlin to instruct in T-37s and T-38s. I'd better put on a happy face. I saluted the student squadron commander and pumped my fists on the way back to my seat. Since I didn't get my number-one choice, the F-15 was going to have to 'sell' itself to me, but I decided to go into it with an open mind. Of the 72 students who started, about 38 graduated. Even during the Reagan build-up, there were standards. The last student was washed out the day we received our wings. I started F-15A training at Luke AFB, AZ in July 1983 and was assigned to the 7thTactical Fighter Squadron at Holloman AFB, NM in October 1983. In February 1987 I was assigned to the 65th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis AFB. About a year and a half into the Aggressor assignment, the decision was made to convert from the F-5E to another airplane; which was, ultimately, the F-16. There was a lot of indecisiveness at the USAF level as to which Aggressor pilots would convert to the F-16. At first, the Air Force wasn't going to send a lot of former F-15 guys like me to F-16 training. So here was a large group if F-5 instructors with no place to go; or, at least, we thought. Uncle Sugar had a lot of F-5 instructor pilot (IP) jobs in exotic locations and he lined us former Eagle pilots against the wall and started throwing darts at us. I got an assignment to Sidi Ahmed Air Base in Bizerte, Tunisia. I went on record as having volunteered for the job if I could come back to the Aggressors and convert to the F-16 (Remember? My number-one choice). The deal was done and after a year in a land of strange new sights and smells, I got an assignment to the PACAF Aggressors who were in the process of moving from Clark Air Base in The Philippines to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and taking delivery of brand new Block 30 F-16C Vipers. Unfortunately, en route to Mac Dill AFB, FL to get checked out in the F-16 the powers-that-be decided to close all the USAF Aggressor squadrons. Suddenly, I become that guy with Eagle stink on him that the Air Force didn't want to send to a Viper if it didn't have to. This was especially true at the captain level. Those streams were just not to be crossed. There was a lot of back-and-forth at Tactical Air Command assignments and the USAF Personnel Center about what to do with me and the initial hack wasn't very good – Air Liaison Officer at Fort Irwin, CA. However, cooler heads prevailed and I was allowed to continue F-16 training and got an assignment to Misawa Air Base, Japan. That's how I got to the F-16. It took me over 7 years from the time a started UPT to the time I got my first Viper flight. Arriving at Misawa, I fell into an age gap. There were a bunch of old-heads and a bunch of young punks, and with lots previous fighter experience, I upgraded to F-16 IP (instructor pilot) pretty quickly. Our squadron weapons and tactics officer, now a four-star, was a great guy and an outstanding example of what a squadron patch wearer (USAF Fighter Weapon's School graduate) should be. I still had time left before I got too senior, so he backed me to go the F-16 Fighter Weapons School (I was in the last "Fighter" Weapons School class – 92A). Being a FWS graduate opens some doors not necessarily available to other fighter pilots. In 1995, while flying Vipers at Pope AFB, I was selected to be the first

MiG-29 exchange pilot in Germany. A requirement for the job was to be a Weapons School graduate. After that assignment, it was back to the Viper at Cannon AFB, NM and then, ultimately, back to Nellis in 2001. I hung up the spurs in December 2004. That's the chronology in a nutshell.

When it comes to US fighters, you have flown some of the most notorious American fighters in modern history, including F-15, F-5, and F-16. Can you give us an idea of what the different characteristics of each jet are and their positives and negatives, especially in terms of air-to-air combat?

F-15A/B: The F-15 I flew was nowhere near the jet it evolved into. The Eagle is big, powerful and handles great. It's a lot like a Mercedes. The cockpit is large and roomy and the outward visibility, except for the canopy bow, is slightly better the Viper's. Control response is crisp and sometimes twitchy, especially in pitch. The F-15A is structurally 1500 pounds lighter than the F-15C. It also carries 2000 pounds less internal fuel than the F-15C. That meant lots of short sorties. It is a great BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers aka dogfighting) machine. The jet accelerates well, but is not especially fast at low altitude. At lot is written about the F-15 being Mach 2.5 capable. First off, Mach 2.5 is altitude limited to above 50,000 feet and time limited to 1 minute maximum. I've flown the jet to Mach 2.35, its normal operating limit, on only a couple of occasions. We occasionally did intercepts against SR-71s in which we got out to Mach 1.9 to Mach 2.1, but flying at those kinds of speeds were rare. Before anyone thinks we were trying to chase down SR-71s, that was not the case. The intercepts were head-on in which we simulated launching AIM-7s using the SR-71 as a MiG-25 simulator. Accelerating straight up? That's a myth. First off, the old coal-burning Pratt F100-100 proved troublesome. When the throttles were pushed into afterburner you weren't 100% sure if the flame would come out of the back end or the front end. Sometimes, it came out of both ends. I've flown a twin-engine glider, meaning that both engines, while still operating but producing no thrust, as they had stalled. I had maybe 30 hours in the jet at that point. While the Pratt F100-220 in the F-15C is more trouble free, it only produces about 23,500 pounds of thrust. Installed thrust-to-weight is slightly less than 1:1 with eight missiles and no external fuel. If you point the jet straight up and start climbing thrust starts to fall off as the air's density starts to decrease. Weight is not decreasing, as fuel is burned off faster than thrust is decreasing. So stop it everyone – there's no accelerating going straight up in the F-15. Where the F-15A fell short, at least compared to what the jet became, is in the avionics department. The original APG-63 radar nowhere lived up to the hype and is worthy of a whole other discussion. Bottom line – I was able to lay a solid air-to-air foundation in the F-15 and, in the end, the jet 'sold' itself to me. I loved flying it.

F-5E/F: Getting selected to the aggressors was a huge deal for me and what I wanted to do after my initial fighter assignment. In those days, it was rare for a young punk like me to get a second consecutive Eagle assignment unless one went to either Luke AFB or Tyndall AFB to be an F-15 IP. The aggressor pilot selection process was competitive, so I felt pretty good about the opportunity. We had no two-seat F-5s in the aggressors. I didn't fly the F-5F until I'd been flying the jet for over a year and a half. I hated the F-5F. It was a dog. As complex as the Eagle is, the F-5E is the polar opposite. Simplicity is a whole quality unto itself. Most look at the F-5E and surmise it's a single-seat T-38. That's not the case. The F-5E's GE J85-21 engines have almost as much thrust in military power as the T-38's GE J85-5s have in full afterburner. The F-5E carries 900 pounds more fuel than the T-38, so it has slightly better legs. The F-5 also has semiautomatic or fully automatic, depending on vintage, leading and trailing edge maneuvering flaps and has leading edge extensions similar to the Viper. The Tiger II will fly rings around a T-38 and is faster at both low and high altitude. Because the F-5 is so small it does present some issues with radar detection range and, if it survives to the merge, it's difficult to acquire visually. Finding the merge in the F-5 is also a challenge as its pulse radar is not very good and is difficult to use. You bank on the fact that everyone is flying a bigger jet. In a maneuvering fight, the F-5E can acquit itself well. While not enjoying the sustained turn rate of other fighters, its nose can be jacked around at slow speed to at least intimidate some young fighter pilot into making a mistake. The controls feel slightly

heavier than those in the T-38 and rearward visibility is somewhat lacking, but workable. Over-the-nose visibility is also a challenge as the nose is fairly long and you sit fairly low in the cockpit. I came into a lot of merges inverted if I knew the adversaries were below me. The F-5 was a great aggressor aircraft. It did a great job simulating the MiG-21, a passable job of simulating the MiG-23, but was unable to simulate the new MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker. Its inability to simulate the new Soviet 4 th-generation threats was one of the things that led to its demise in the USAF. It lacks as an operational fighter due to range limitations and it can't carry a lot. But it is a hoot to fly. I learned more about stick-and-rudder fighter piloting in the F-5 than I did in anything else. In the high horsepower jets, thrust can make up for a lot of mistakes. Not so with the F-5. It's a little jet with lots of bullets.

F-16C/D: The Viper is, in my opinion, what a fighter should be. It is small, nimble, accelerates like a bullet and is a pure joy to fly. Instead of loading it down with bombs, the radar should have been improved to give it Eagle-like capabilities and the jet should have taken more of an air-to-air role. While I said that the F-15 is like a Mercedes, The F-16 is like a Formula One race car. The cockpit is tight and it gives you more of the sensation that you're actually wearing the jet than actually sitting in it. The side-stick controller takes about as much time to get used to as it takes to read this sentence. I've flown all the C/D versions – Blocks 25, 30, 32, 40, 42, 50, 52. The Pratt-powered Blocks 25, 32 and 42 are good performers, but not great. The GE-powered Blocks 30, 40 and 50, plus the Pratt-powered Block 52 are absolute beasts. The GE-powered fleet is flown by the active-duty F-16 squadrons while Air National Guard and Reserve squadrons operate a mixed bag of GE-powered and Pratt-powered Vipers. I've never flown a jet that will out accelerate the GE-powered F-16. At low altitude, GE Vipers will step out to its airspeed of 810 knots indicated airspeed like nobody's business. The limit is based on the polycarbonate canopy and not the engine. At higher speeds the canopy starts to get warm due to air friction. At some point the canopy will start to deform if the jet gets much faster. At high altitude, I've had the jet out to Mach 2.05. This limit is due to the fixed air inlet and opposed the F-15's variable geometry inlet. In his book, Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade After Vietnam, Col C.R. Anderegg, USAF (ret), former F-15 pilot and F-4 Fighter Weapons School graduate, wrote this about the F-16: "The pure joy of the F-16, though, was in the furball (complex dogfight with many aircraft), where the aircraft had the edge over the F-15 and a significant edge over everything else. With the F-16's incredible agility and power, the pilot could get close and stay close. He was less a viper than a python gradually squeezing the fight closer while beating down his victim's energy and resistance until the time came for a mortal blow. Chaff might spoof a radar missile or flares might decoy a heat-seeker, but as one pilot said, 'The gun is stupid. You can't jam it and you can't fool it.' The F-16 was a superb gunfighter, and in the furball it was the top cat."

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F-15 Eagle Vs F-16 Viper, which wins the day in an air-to-air engagement?

Starting from BVR, the F-15 enjoys a big advantage in radar detection range. Surprisingly, the Viper's radar has significantly higher peak power than the Eagle's radar. Because the F-15s radar can operate with a high pulse-repetition frequency versus the Viper, whose radar operates with a medium pulse-repetition frequency, the Eagle's radar is actually transmitting more radar energy down range resulting in greater detection range. Because of some of the limitations of the old APG-63 I flew with in the F-15A, the F-16C's APG-68 was actually a step up for me. The APG-68 had more modes and multi-targeting capability. Unfortunately, for the first couple of years I flew Vipers, we were AIM-9 only. AMRAAM didn't start to come into the equation until late 1991. In an air-to-air configuration, the F-16 has a higher fuel fraction and lower specific fuel consumption than the F-15. An F-15C IP at the Fighter Weapons School, (then) Major Mike "Boa" Straight, wrote an article about this in the Fighter Weapons Review in 1988 or 1989. I'm not just making this up. On-station time, acceleration to intercept speed and range advantages go to the Viper.

WVR (within visual range) scenario: An F-15C and GE-powered F-16C merge head-on, no missiles, guns only. This is truly where the F-16 excels. The F-15 is absolutely no slouch in this arena and the margin for error is small, but he F-16 enjoys a sustained turn rate advantage and a thrust-to-weight advantage. My game plan would be not to slow down too much in the F-16. Where the F-16 starts to fall off in comparison is when it gets slow and butts up against its hard-wired angle-of-attack limiter. Slow is not a place to be in the F-16 unless absolutely necessary. I wanted to keep my airspeed up relative to the Eagle and beat him down to where his nose track starts to slow and use the vertical as required and the F-16's turn rate advantage to bring my nose to bear. Both jets bring excellent handling qualities and visibility to the equation. What you really don't want to be is the MiG pilot who faces off against either jet in this scenario.

What was it like being sent to Germany to fly with former enemies in a fighter that you trained so hard to kill for so many years?

As stated earlier, I got this assignment while I was flying F-16s at Pope AFB, NC. We officially activated the F-16 squadron in June 1993 and were declared operational six or so months later. Air Combat Command (ACC) brought in a fairly experienced group of guys to stand up the new squadron. The four flight commanders, of which I was one, were promoted to major in February 1994. I personally pinned on major on the 1st of March, 1994. We completed our first combat deployment in November 1994 and that set the whole scenario up. At the time ACC (Air Combat Command) had a policy of only three field-grade (major through colonel) officers in a line fighter squadron. That meant the squadron commander, the operations officer and the assistant operations officer. We suddenly had too many field graders, but ACC let us slide until the combat deployment was completed. Then the handwriting was on the wall and I had to find a new assignment. In the 1990s, assignments could be found and applied for on-line on the Personnel Center's website. We called these 'the want ads.' I had been unsuccessful until one of my squadron mates asked me if I had applied for the MiG-29 exchange assignment. I had missed that one. It was in the special duty assignments section. I checked out the want ad and called the point-of-contact (POC). All assignments had to be posted in the want ads, regardless if someone had already been penciled in for that job or not. Officially, it had to be a 'competitive' process. Sometimes, someone already had the job but it was listed just to be 'legal.' I asked the POC if this was the case. I figured someone's prize show dog at Nellis already had the assignment. It has to be in the want ads just to be legal. The POC told me it was an open competition. "Put me down as a volunteer," was my reply. The job required that one be either an F-15C or F-16 Weapons School graduate, pass the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) and complete German language training at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, CA. As an Aggressor pilot I had been the MiG-29 / Su-27 subject matter expert. I really wanted this job. What a chance to see if what I had been teaching about the MiG-29 Fulcrum was actually correct. The first thing to do was the DLAB. In El Paso, TX we had to take Spanish from the first through the seventh grade and I couldn't put together a complete sentence in Spanish; how was I supposed to pass the DLAB? For the DLAB I was set at a desk and issued a set of headphones. The test proctor inserted a cassette tape into a tape player and the tape started off with language rule 1. With language rule 1 in hand, the recording went into some made-up language that sounded like a mixture of Tagalog and Arabic. Based on language rule 1, and the made-up language, I had to translate different statements. After about five questions with only language rule 1, then came language rule 2. Oh by the way. Don't round file language rule 1. It's still a player. Now I had to translate more statements using both language rules. Then came language rules 3, 4 and 5, each at a time. Each new rule required translating statements while retaining the previously introduced rules. It was a hard test and there was no rewinding the tape to listen to something over again. I knew I had busted it and my name would be taken out of consideration for the MiG-29 assignment. Lo and behold, I actually passed the test. "When in doubt, 'C' it out" really worked. As a result, I was officially a player for the MiG-29 exchange assignment. There was a report-no-later-than date for German language training at DLI for May 1995. About a month out, there had not yet been a release of who had actually gotten the MiG-29 job. Anyone

who got the job would have to have time to prepare for the move, actually get to California and then find a house before the class started. The Air Force created a time crunch. There was a guy I had gone to OTS and UPT with working fighter assignments at the Personnel Center. He got one of the A-10 assignments out of UPT and we eventually ended up flying F-16s together at Misawa. I called him to see if he couldn't get any intel from the special duty assignments folks. He said he'd have to call me back. When he did he told me he couldn't tell me but he said if he got a chance to come to Germany he'd like for me to give him a ride in the MiG-29. I got the official word a few days later when a USAF colonel in London – he was responsible for all exchange officers in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East – called to congratulate me on my selection. He explained that what put me over the top, and it was the Germans' call, was that I had flown both the Eagle and the Viper and had been an Aggressor pilot. I showed up in Laage, Germany in January 1996. The first month I was there I was without my family and I did this so I could find a house before they showed up. Until my household goods arrived I stayed on base. Since there was nothing else to do, I used the time to study the MiG-29 Dash 1 (Flight Manual). The jet is exceedingly simple plus the electric and hydraulic systems are similar to the F-16. I got a few afternoons of systems academics, normal operations and emergency procedures. I went through about five simulator sorties emphasizing normal ops, emergency procedures and instrument flying. This culminated in an emergency procedures simulator evaluation. Flight training was just like we do in the USAF when we transition someone to a new fighter. The first few flights were mainly aircraft handling, instrument flying and pattern work in a two-seater. The fourth or fifth flight was an instrument check which allowed to me solo the single-seater. I didn't give much special credence to my initial solo. I had soloed other jets before, so this was nothing new. My family had since arrived in Germany and I didn't mention anything to my wife about my initial solo flight when I left for work that morning. However, after I stepped to go on my solo flight, one of the pilots went to pick up my family and bring them out to the base to watch the event. When I taxied up to the runway, I switched to tower's frequency and transmitted I was ready for take-off. The clearance came from my 9-year old daughter. That was cool. After landing I was met by the squadron pilots, my family, the wing leadership and numerous others. I received a plaque and we toasted with champagne to commemorate the event. The Germans do things up right. Next, it was on to tactical training in the Fulcrum. When I showed up in Germany I had over 2500 fighter hours. It was decided that I would complete an abbreviated syllabus. I did the BFM phase (offensive, defensive, neutral) in one day. I did one intercept sortie and was done with my check-out. The only avenue for Luftwaffe pilots into the MiG squadron was to be an F-4 flight lead. No new guys and no Tornado pilots. The conversion syllabus was designed for the new MiG-29 pilot to walk out the other end as a MiG-29 flight lead. After my last syllabus sortie I was asked if I wanted to lead a 4 MiG-29s versus 4 Danish F-16s sortie the next day. I explained that it had been a year since I'd flown a 4 v 4 anything and I was probably a little rusty. I qualified further I'd be more than happy to fly any other position in the flight, which I did. I just didn't lead – until the next 4 v 4. Since I had already been a fighter IP in multiple jets, the chief of wing standardization and evaluation (and F-4F Fighter Weapons School graduate) decided that my IP upgrade would also be abbreviated. He explained that they weren't going to teach me how to be an instructor pilot so all I needed to do was take an instrument check ride in the backseat of the two-holer and safely land the jet from the backseat. I was a MiG-29 IP with less than 30 hours in the jet. We did not employ the Fulcrum as the Warsaw Pact had intended. We employed it using western tactics. Mostly like the F-16 before it got AMRAAM. Although we had a BVR missile, we weren't going to stand toe-to-toe with AMRAAM shooters and win. We had to be sneaky. When Germany reunited and the Luftwaffe inherited 24 MiG-29s, a small cadre of F-4 pilots were sent to the MiG-29 squadron to check out in the jet and then 'teach' already-qualified MiG-29 pilots from the former Nationale Volks Armee (National Peoples' Army) of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany) how to employ it. The Luftwaffe went through a vetting process of which former East German MiG-29 pilots to retain and which to cut loose. The process was as difficult and it was sometimes harsh. But, in the end, of around 25 MiG-29 pilots in the squadron when I arrived, about half were former East German (Ossis) and the other half were former West Germans (Wessis). The vetting process was done right and the Luftwaffe picked the right guys all around from both sides. Even though we were enemies only a few years before, the Ossis were all great guys. We shared a common love of flying fighters. Politics, shmolotics. I got along great with them and they were very receptive to me being in the squadron. The

only issues about me being in the wing came from some of the senior enlisted maintainers (almost all Ossis). Some of them were outright hostile. I avoided bringing up 'us versus them' discussions with the Ossis. If they brought it up, I'd certainly join in the conversation. I didn't want to seem like the conqueror and them the vanquished in the Cold War. We concentrated on making ourselves better MiG-29 pilots. I did get the feeling they understood that at least their training was not up to western standards and they were frustrated by what they were not allowed to do and how innovative thought was crushed. They had great respect for the capabilities of our aircraft and our training.

What was the MiG-29 Fulcrum like to fly? Did it live up to the fear and Cold War hype?

The Fulcrum is a very simple jet that was designed to fit in the Soviet model of tactical aviation. That means the pilot was an extension of the ground controller. As many have read, innovative tactics and autonomous operations were not approved solutions in the Warsaw Pact countries. The cockpit switchology is not up to western standards and the sensors are not tools used to enhance pilot situation awareness, rather they are only used as tools to aid in the launch of weapons. The jet is very reliable and fairly simple to maintain. I could service the fuel, oil, hydraulics and pneumatics and had to demonstrate proficiency in these areas before I could take a jet off-station. Its handling qualities are mediocre at best. The flight control system is a little sloppy and not very responsive. This does not mean the jet isn't very maneuverable. It is. I put it between the F-15C and the F-16. The pilot just has to work harder to get the jet to respond the way he wants. The Fulcrum also has a lot of ponies under the hood. I rack-and-stack it in the same order as above as far as thrust-to-weight. The only real side-by-side performance comparison was with an F-15C. I was carrying a centerline fuel tank and the Eagle had no external stores except for the wing pylons and missile launch rails. The mission was BFM but the MiG-29's centerline tank is limited to 4 g until empty. The performance comparison put me 3000 feet line abreast with the F-15 at 10,000 feet and 300 knots indicated airspeed. At the F-15 pilot's call we each selected full afterburner and I matched his pitch rate until we got to 70° nose high. The first one to reach 100 knots would call terminate and we'd see how it played out. When the F-15 pilot hit 100 knots I still had 170 knots and was well above him. Another common performance comparison that doesn't require any side-by-side look is over-top-top airspeed – the speed required to complete a loop. The Viper requires about 250 knots to get over the top. I could horse the MiG-29 over the top at 150 knots. While the GE-powered F-16 does have a thrust-to-weight advantage over the MiG-29, the Viper will get to its angle-of-attack limit if it started a loop at such a slow speed and the pilot can't pull the nose through the vertical. Although the Fulcrum has the same angle-of-attack limit as the F-16 (26°), the Fulcrum pilot can override the limiter and get to 45° to 50° angle-of-attack. The only caution when doing this with the MiG is that it loses some directional stability above the angle-of-attack limit. The Fulcrum only carries a few hundred more pounds of fuel internally than an F-16. That fuel has to feed two fairly thirsty engines. The jet doesn't go very far on a tank of gas. We figured on a combat radius of about 150 nautical miles with a centerline fuel tank. This included a high subsonic cruise out to its area-of-responsibility, about 2 minutes of afterburner and a high subsonic cruise back to base. When it came to tactically employing the jet there were surprises and disappointments. The radar was actually pretty good and enabled fairly long-range contacts. As already alluded to, the displays were very basic and didn't provide much to enhance the pilot's situational awareness. The radar switchology is also heinous. The Fulcrum's radar-guided BVR weapon, the AA-10A Alamo, has nowhere the same legs as an AMRAAM and is not launch-and-leave like the AMRAAM. Within its kinematic capability, the AA-10A is a very good missile but its maximum employment range was a real disappointment. One sensor that got a lot of discussion from Intel analysts was the infrared search-and-track system (IRSTS). Most postulated that the MiG-29 could use the passive IRSTS to run a silent intercept and not alert anyone to its presence by transmitting with its radar. The IRSTS turned out to be next to useless and could have been left off the MiG-29 with negligible impact on its combat capability. After a couple of attempts at playing around with the IRSTS I dropped it from my bag of tricks. Other things that were disappointing about the MiG-29 were the navigation system, which was unreliable, the attitude indicator and the heads-up display. Overall, the MiG-29 was/is not the 10 foot

tall monster that was postulated during the Cold War. It's a good airplane, just not much of a fighter when compared to the West's 4th-generation fighters. Regardless, there was the 'cool factor.' I got to fly the MiG-29 all over Europe and we were treated like rock stars. Those fighter squadrons we didn't visit came to Laage. At one point we discussed putting up a sign by the transient aircraft ramp that would say "Fighter Town Laage." I flew to US airbases several times and often couldn't get away from the airplane for over an hour. The only time I got harassed was at Ramstein Air Base. I had flown a Fulcrum there one morning to take an Air Command and Staff College test and, since my USAF boss's office had been moved to Ramstein from London, to go check in with the colonel. After meeting with him I was walking over to the Base Exchange to pick up some tortilla chips, salsa and Jack Daniel for the squadron bar. Every time I flew to a US air base an extra travel pod was hung on the jet to fill up with snacks and drinks for the squadron. Walking from my boss's office to the Exchange I had to walk past Headquarters US Air Force Europe. Headquarters such as these are manned with lots of colonels and generals. I hadn't gotten 100 feet from my boss's office when a USAF colonel stopped me, put me at attention and demanded to know why I was wearing a gray German flight suit and a USAF flight cap. I tried explaining to him why and he wasn't satisfied. I finally had to ask him to go talk to my colonel at which time he let me go while he walked off grunting to himself. I also got congratulated many times about my accent-free English. Everyone expected the guy wearing a German flight suit to be German. I guess the USAF major's oak leaves on my shoulders didn't register. In the end, I had the chance to compare what I had learned as an aggressor pilot to what I learned getting to fly the actual machine. I was dating the other team's prom queen and she was telling me all her most intimate secrets.

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During the mid 1990s the US still relied on the relatively narrow field of view AIM-9L/M Sidewinder as a short-range heat-seeking missile, what was it like being introduced to the MiG-29's Archer missile, with its high off bore-sight targeting capabilities and its helmet mounted sight?

The Archer and the helmet-mounted sight (HMS) brought a real big stick to the playground. First, the HMS was really easy to use. Every pilot was issued his own HMS. It mounted via a spring-loaded clip to a modified HGU-55P helmet. The pilot then could connect the HMS to a tester and adjust the symbology so it was centered in the monocle. Once in the jet the simple act of plugging in the power cord meant it was ready to go. There was no alignment process as required with the Joint Helmet-Mounted Cuing System. It just worked. Being on the shooting end of the equation, I saw shot opportunities I would've never dreamed of with the AIM-9L/M. Those on the receiving end were equally less enthused about being 'shot' from angles they couldn't otherwise train to. I was once playing bandit for a couple of F-16s in visual 2 v 1 Air Combat Maneuvering. I was offensive on the wingman and had temporarily lost sight of the fight lead. I reacquired a tally-ho (visual contact) on him as he was pulling lead for a high-angle gun shot. Instead of calling me 'dead' with an AIM-9M, he flew through AIM-9M launch parameters trying to get gun video on me. His attempt put him in launch parameters for an Archer shot, so with a push of a button on the right throttle I commanded the seeker head to slave to the HMS line-of-sight and was able to call a kill shot on him. Imagine pulling lead for a gun shot and getting killed by the target!

How did a MiG-29 in skilled hands stack up against NATO fighters, especially the F-16 and the F-15?

From BVR (beyond visual range), the MiG-29 is totally outclassed by western fighters. Lack of situation awareness and the short range of the AA-10A missile compared to the AMRAAM means the NATO fighter is going to have to be having a really bad day for the Fulcrum pilot to be successful. In the WVR (within visual range) arena, a skilled MiG-29 pilot can give and Eagle or Viper driver all he/she wants. When I was flying the MiG-29, the way I prosecuted the visual arena depended on the scenario. If

it was 1 v 1 BFM and we only called kills with a gun shot, I flew the jet differently than if missiles and guns were in play. If the BFM scenario was guns-only, I flew the jet more like an F-16, knowing I had a lot more angle-of-attack (than an F-16) available if required. If missile shots were in play then I would pull as hard as I could to place the other guy in Archer parameters as quickly as I could and make him at least feel threatened by my nose position; hopefully, forcing him into making a mistake. In a many versus many scenario in which missile shots were generally counted for kills, I was hesitant in bleeding off all my airspeed to get the quick Archer shot since I probably needed the energy to maneuver against other aircraft in follow-on engagements.

Over the years you have flown against so many different fighters from around the globe, what foreign fighter aircraft surprised you as to their capabilities, or lack thereof, during dissimilar air combat training events (fighting against a different fighter types)?

Probably the most I've ever been surprised by a DACT adversary was flying against Mirage 2000s from the French Air Force when I was flying the MiG-29. I had read all kinds of glowing reports about the Mirage. The few times I did fly against them, either the jet isn't all it's cracked up to be or we were flying against the worst Mirage 2000 pilots in the French Air Force. I was not impressed. On the positive side, I once participated with Italian Navy flying AMRAAM-capable Harriers with APG-65 radars (the radar originally in the F-18). The scenario was two Harriers plus two MiG-29s versus four German F-4F ICE Phantoms. The Italian flight lead did the coordination briefing for the mission. Obviously, he briefed our 4-ship's game plan and ran the post-mission debriefing. From start to finish the whole show was as professional and well executed as anything one would expect from the USAF Weapons School. Two large thumbs up.

How did your role as a USAF fighter pilot change once you returned from your historic MiG-29 pilot exchange with the German Air Force?

I figured I would be a shoe-in for an assignment to Nellis, if anything to be an aggressor pilot in the Adversary Flight at Red Flag. The Adversary Flight was the remnant of the 64th Aggressor Squadron from pre-Desert Storm. That did not happen and I ended up going to Cannon AFB, NM. I had played a high school football game in nearby Clovis, NM and had spent a couple of nights there when I was flying the Eagle. I had seen enough of Clovis to know I didn't want to live there. The Air Force figured otherwise. It always befuddled me why the Air Force would send someone to fly the MiG-29 and then not use that expertise. Two other guys had the MiG-29 job. The guy who replaced me went back to the airlines. The last guy was going to get out and go to the Guard when I hired him to be my operations officer when I was commander of Detachment 3 of the 53rd Test and Evaluation Group at Nellis. He tried to get hired by the 64th Aggressor Squadron before thinking about getting out. The 64th told him "no." Three former MiG-29 pilots and the Air Force took a who-GAS attitude. Go figure? While at Cannon, except for bro-level tactics discussions, I never pushed anyone to listen to what I had learned about the MiG-29. I fact, I had been there over two years before being asked to give a briefing to the pilots. One thing we did when I transferred back to Nellis, since I ran all things relating to foreign materiel exploitation, was to set up an exploitation of the AA-10A and the Archer using the German MiG-29s. This exploitation became known as Project Grace and was conducted at Eglin AFB, FL in June and July 2003. The Germans island-hopped the Fulcrums to the States as they had done a few times prior. We fired 11 AA-10As and 12 Archers in varying scenarios. We learned a lot about the radar and the missiles. That we conducted this exploitation was not classified. It made the local newspapers. The results, however, are classified. After I retired I test flew the first privately-owned flyable MiG-29 in the world.

Today, the Su-27 and other advanced Flanker derivatives (Su-30/Su-35 etc) are seen by some as dangerously capable against America's aging fourth-generation fighter arsenal. Can the F-15 and F-16 remain viable against the 'Super Flanker' threat?

Absolutely. How? Continuing to upgrade sensors, weapons and defensive systems; and continuing to maintain a training advantage. Remember, the Super Flanker is not stealthy, so you're not really asking a 4th-generation fighter to do anything it really wasn't capable of in the first place. The obvious long-pole in the tent is the age of the F-15 and F-16 airframes. How long can the jets hold out? How long will maintaining them be funded?

Is 3D thrust vectoring, like that found on advanced MiG-29 and Su-27 variants, the threat some say it is when it comes to the within visual range fight?

First, a little thrust vectoring history. The USAF tested a 3D nozzle on the Multi-Axis Thrust Vectored F-16 in the early 1990s. It was found that thrust vectoring was really only useful at speeds below 250 knots (with the F-16; the speed will vary with other jets). Above that speed the jet had enough g available and was maneuverable enough that thrust vectoring didn't add anything. Also, at high speeds, if the nozzles start to swing the jet violently around you're apt to induce unacceptable loads on the airframe. Thrust vectoring, whether 2D or 3D, is a two-edged sword. If you're going to use it, you'd better kill me now. Ever seen videos of the Super Flanker spinning around like a top and doing back flips at an airshow? First off, the jet is slow – not a place to be in a multi-bogey environment. Second, when thrust is steered off-axis the axial component of thrust is decreased. Axial thrust pushes the jet (and wing) through the air at a speed required to maintain lift. Take away forward thrust, take away speed and lift. Go back to the videos. What's happening? The Flanker is dropping like a rock at slow speed (no lift is being produced by the wing). If the Flanker pilot does not kill me now, the other edge of the sword is about to fall. He's automatically building in vertical turning room for me and it's going to take an unacceptable amount of time for him to get enough smash back to take it away due to his low airspeed. If I'm still alive I'm turning him into a strafe rag. I flew enough BFM against the Raptor before I retired where the new Raptor pilots were discovering there's a time for thrust vectoring and there's a time to leave that club in the bag.

Has the AIM-9X and Joint Helmet Mounted Cuing System, along with all the other helmet mounted sights and high-off-bore-sight missiles, changed the reality of within visual range air-to-air combat?

HOBS missiles, as I've already stated, bring a whole new facet to the WVR fight and make the arena more lethal. HOBS versus HOBS? Who can get to launch parameters first? Better countermeasures and missile counter-countermeasures are also definite players.

How will threat replication that is based around the F-16 alone cope with things like low-observability, super maneuverability and Infrared search and track systems in the future?

You can't unless you start turning F-22s and F-35s into aggressor aircraft. That ain't happening.

Will the F-35's sensor fusion and low observability (stealth) allow it to overcome its lackluster maneuverability and kinetic performance against future enemies?

I can't answer this one. I can ask, "Why did they make it such a pig?"

If you had to fly any fighter into an air combat arena today, including an operational F-35A as an option, what would it be?

The F-22. It's a better jet than the F-35. It can carry at least as much, further and faster. If it was up to me I'd cancel the F-35 and start building more Raptors. A common counter to that is the cost to restart the F-22 assembly line. How much does one pig cost? Another is that the F-35 program is too far along. Yep, let's just keep paying for a poorly-managed, overly expensive fighter that has three versions that make any one version less than it could be. Can you say F-111? That the F-35's avionics are better than the F-22's; how about a Raptor upgrade? I'd also build more advanced versions of the F-15 and F-16. OK, I've spent enough time on my soapbox.

If you had a wish list of three things that you think the USAF fighter community needs more than anything else, and currently do not have, what would it be?

Number 1: AESA radar for the F-16. A force multiplier.

Number 2: Better offensive jamming and better defensive systems.

Number 3: More DACT (dissimilar air combat training—flying against different types of fighters than the one you fly). There are students who show up as Weapons School students who have never done a 4 versus 4 DACT mission. I was doing them as an F-15 student at Luke. I could write a short thesis on this subject.

With AESA radars, more effective BVR missiles, an increasingly networked battlespace, HOBS missiles and high-end sensor fusion now a reality, is the dogfight finally a relic of the past?

This has been an assumption by so-called experts since the 1950s. Unfortunately, these experts have never flown fighters and we've proven many times since that aircraft will get into the visual arena even with sophisticated BVR sensors and weapons. We build better BVR weapons and our adversaries build better radar jammers. And it goes around and around and around. Networks can be jammed and/or compromised. So yes, dogfighting is not dead. How about manned fighters being replaced by drones? At the end of the movie "Patton" a reporter asked the general this: "General, we're told of wonder weapons the Germans were working on: Long-range rockets, push-button bombing, weapons that don't need soldiers. What's your take on that?" To which Patton replied, "Wonder weapons? My God, I don't see the wonder in them. Killing without heroics. Nothing is glorified, nothing is reaffirmed. No heroes, no cowards, no troops. No generals. Only those that are left alive and those that are left... dead." Did Patton ever actually say this? I don't know, but I believe the sentiment (except for the "… no generals" part).

Can you share one of your most memorable moments as a USAF fighter pilot with us?

I'll share one since it was one of the dumber things I've ever done with a jet. On January 4, 1989, two US Navy Tomcats shot down two Libyan MiG-23s over the Gulf of Sidra. It was during the time I was an F-5 instructor in Tunisia. Bizerte, Tunisia is the northern-most town on the African continent. We did 99%

of our flying over the Mediterranean. I was leading a BFM sortie one afternoon when my radar warning receiver (RWR) alerted me that an aircraft had locked on to me. The symbology indicated it was a Tomcat and I turned to put the symbol on the RWR's scope at my right 1 o'clock. Off in the distance to our north I saw a single contrail heading south. I knew that a few days before the Navy had shot down two Floggers in international airspace, but I was going to check it out anyway. My wingman and I turned towards the F-14 and started a cruise climb at about 0.9 Mach up to its altitude of 31,000 feet. At about 2 miles from the Tomcat I expected him to turn into us and take away the lateral turning room, instead he turned away and started to head back north. I cut across his turn and ended up about 200 feet above him a couple hundred feet out at his right 4 o'clock. Both the pilot and RIO were moving their melons right and left, but were looking down as if they thought we were lower than they were. I continued to move closer when the RIO spotted me about 100 feet out. I settled onto the right wing of the Tomcat, went to the emergency frequency of 243.0 and made some disparaging remarks about the Navy (with a noticeably non-Arabic accent), then flipped them off and left. I heard about it a few days later when some pilots off the boat came to Sidi Ahmed via a C-2 to do some coordination for DACT that was to follow a few days later. Everyone got a chuckle out of it.

Elite F-14 Flight Officer Explains Why The Tomcat Was So Influential

We sat at the end of the runway, our F-14's GE-110 motors humming, awaiting our clearance to begin what would be the last F-14 Demonstration ever. The Air Boss's voice crackled over the radio: "Tomcat Demo, you're cleared to five miles and 15k feet. The air show box is yours" At that very moment, I distinctly remember what my Commanding Officer told us before the show: "Fellas, make it a memorable one… just not too memorable!" LCDR Joe "Smokin" Ruzicka was the Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) to fly the last F-14 Demonstration before the Tomcat's final demise in 2006. Commander Ruzicka took the time to sit down with Foxtrot Alpha to talk Tomcats and share his amazing experiences and lasting impressions of being part of one of the most competitive, demanding and rewarding cultures in American history- the F-14 Tomcat community.

Being in the Navy's premier fighter jet couldn't be a bad thing, right?

My hometown used to have a sign at the city limits that said, "Welcome to Crandall, TX, Home to 1001 friendly people—and a few old grouches." No one from our town, to my knowledge, had ever attended a service academy—not even the old grouches. It seemed like a great opportunity and something that was outside of my comfort zone and probably everybody else's comfort zone I knew at the time. I was accepted to West Point and the Naval Academy, so when deciding between the two, I chose the latter, because it seemed to provide the most flexibility in your post school military specialty. Who wants to pound the ground when you can sail on the high seas? It was in those 4 years at Annapolis where I decided I wanted to fly. When I took the vision test for the commissioning physical my junior year, I tried to pass it without wearing glasses. The nurse administering the exam asked me, "Honey, do you wear glasses?" I replied, "Yes, ma'am." She snapped back, "Well I suggest you wear them from now on, especially when you are driving!" Sadly, I knew my best hope to fly was as a Naval Flight Officer (NFO). Flight school in Pensacola was a great experience. It was essentially USNA South for all of the

aviation selectees from the class of 1996. Lots of time spent at the Flora-Bama lounge, golfing on Perdido Key, and of course flying the T-34 Mentor and T-39 Sabreliner. After a couple of cross-country trips to San Diego, I was convinced that the home base of the S-3 Viking was for me. However, a couple of friends who had already been selected for Tomcats convinced me to put my name in the hat for the Big Fighter. Oceana, Virginia didn't sound as awesome as San Diego, but being in the Navy's premier fighter jet couldn't be a bad thing, right?

When two guys had flown together a lot, it made them almost act and think as one person...

When you first showed up to the RAG, you really got a sense of how the two-man crew concept worked. The RIO's (Radar Intercept Officer) responsibilities were completely different than the pilot's, but the two needed to work closely in tandem. Both crew member's relied on each other- even down to the RIO having control of the ejection sequence- because conventional wisdom said the pilot would want to stay with the jet until it was too late. The jet could not be flown, and certainly not fought, without both the Pilot and the RIO. The great part about the two man crew was the mutual respect we shared for each other. I remember a salty pilot telling me one time, "There's been a few bad RIO's who have gotten me in trouble, but then there's also been a few good ones who have saved my ass." With the 1960's technology in the jet and a multitude of sensors, weapons, and equipment, the Tomcat was too complicated and too cumbersome to be controlled by one individual. A typical mission's workload would be divided into segments: think on the ground, administrative in the air, combat, and then administrative back with a final of landing/trapping. During start-up, the pilot handled all of the engines, control surfaces, and other on-board checks while the RIO handled the AWG-9 (radar),   LANTIRN  targeting pod, a few other systems, clearance with ATC and most other communications. In fact, the RIO probably did 90% of the communication. Most RIOs wouldn't even let the pilots talk on the primary radio; it was a matter of pride and control. I think the pilots liked not having that burden because it allowed them to concentrate on flying. One of the challenges was always trying to cycle circuit breakers when things were broken in the jet. The Tomcat had eight panels of circuit breakers in the back behind the RIO that looked like eight 1970's  Lite Bright games  all stuck together. The hardest part was making sure you pulled the correct one, as a misstep in that department could be fatal. Pulling circuit breakers was done mostly by feel. Being strapped into an ejection seat, you certainly couldn't turn around easily and verify visually what circuit breaker you were pulling. The good news is there was a method to finding the right circuit breaker based off of its location, assuming you had practiced. The bad news was sometimes you needed to have the flexibility of a 7 year-old girl with a broken arm to reach it! Crew resource management (CRM) dictated what your job was for that specific flight. The majority of the cockpit was "decoupled", meaning there were certain things only the Pilot could perform, and certain things only the RIO could perform. It was a system of checks and balances. This strengthened the crew concept in my opinion, and added to the jet's lethality. When two guys had flown together a lot, it made them almost act and think as one person. For example, on an air-to-ground mission when dropping laser-guided bombs, the RIO's job was to find the target with the LANTIRN pod and designate it. The pilot would verify it was the correct target and then "pickle" (fire) the weapon. Then it was back to the RIO to fire the laser and guide the weapon to impact while the pilot continued to fly the jet, looking for SAMs, etc. For Air-to-Air missions, the RIO worked the radar to acquire the bandit with the AWG-9. The Pilot would correlate the bandit to the threat information called out by the E-2C Hawkeye   to ensure it was the correct target. The pilot would then select, arm and select and fire the appropriate missile. Then it was back to the RIO to maintain radar support as the intercept progressed and the missile flew down-range. One of the best training hops was 2 v 1 "the hard way." This was two bandits vs one fighter. In the WVR (Within Visual Range) arena, the pilot kept tabs on the bandit you merged with while the RIO kept sight of the bandit who was free and disengaged. If the RIOs bandit brought his nose to bear (meaning he's pulling back into the fight to take a shot or make a merge happen), then the RIO would call a switch (if the pilot did not move the jet). Then it was back to forcing a neutral pass with the new bandit and trying stiff arm the disengaged bandit.

Those kinds of fights get pretty wild and hairy, but they were fun. When two guys were used to flying with each other, these types of complementary actions were where the two man crew was at its best.

One of the biggest selling points of the two person crew was the Tomcat's ability to perform the Forward Air Controller role...

In the 1970's and 1980's, the Tomcat was primarily an air-to-air fighter. The threat was the USSR and the mission was being able to fend off the hordes of over the horizon bombers. As the times and technology changed, luckily the Tomcat was a pretty versatile multi-role fighter due to its adaptability and modularity. People forget that it had a TARPS pod, which could bring back some pretty awesome wet film photos from a reconnaissance mission. With the addition of the LANTIRN in the early 90s, and later with GPS for the B and D Tomcat models, it was a very viable air-to-ground platform. In fact, I would say as a stand-alone weapon system, the LANTIRN was as good if not better than our current ATFLIR targeting pod on the Super Hornet, specifically from a picture quality and user-friendly standpoint. Finally, one of the biggest selling points of the two person crew, was the Tomcat's ability to perform the Forward Air Controller (Airborne) role known as "FAC(A)." The FAC(A) role increased as the GWOT evolved. In fact, my old squadron, the Black Knights of VF-154, was providing FAC(A) under CENTCOM for numerous USAF and Navy assets during the early stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom. As a FAC(A), your role is to coordinate air strikes from available air assets in an effort to support troops on the ground. The theory is that as an airborne asset, the FAC(A) has the ability to see the battlefield in the same perspective as the striking jets. In this sense, the goal is to eliminate any and all fratricide because the FAC(A) has the ultimate authority to give a "Cleared Hot" call (authorization to release weapons) to other strikers. The FAC(A) knows exactly where the friendlies are in relation to the target and can see the strikers nose position relative to the target, thus determining if there is a chance of bombs not ending up on that target. In the Tomcat, the pilot's job was to maneuver the jet to get into a position where he could give a "Cleared Hot" call. With multiple strikers inbound separated by time (normally 30 seconds to a minute), this could be a challenge. Typically, one striker is off target with bombs away while the next striker is inbound and in a dive. This is where the RIO tends to earn his money as he visually acquires the inbound striker, talks his pilot's eyes onto him, and then switches to see where the first striker's bombs' hit. When you add SEAD and artillery coordination, close proximity of friendly troops, buddy lasing (having one jet designating a target while another drops the weapons) for laser guided bombs and a MANPAD being launched at someone, it becomes a dynamic and challenging mission; one where two aviators in the cockpit provides an added level of tactical advantage and situational awareness.

The Tomcat's ability to add energy and head into the vertical was a serious advantage over the Super Hornet...

In a BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers ie a dogfight) engagement, the pilot has to think about energy management. Fighter pilots always talk about a Rate vs a Radius fight, which in layman terms means how fast can you go around the circle you are turning versus how short of a radius can you make your circle. Some Fighters perform better in a rate fight while others perform better in a radius fight. For example, if a Tomcat was in a BFM engagement with a Super Hornet, the Tomcat's best chance to win the fight (we are assuming "Sticks and Stones" meaning each fighter has only a gun remaining) is to try and force the Super Hornet to bleed off energy at the first pass. The Tomcat would force the Super to honor his nose position, make a neutral pass at the merge and then go vertical. The Tomcat's ability to add energy and head into the vertical was a serious advantage over the Super Hornet. Conversely, the Tomcat would not want to get into a slow speed fight with the Super. With both jets at slow speed, the Super has a better ability to maneuver his nose for a shot than the Tomcat. The F-15C is probably the

premier BFM fighter and more capable in that area than the Tomcat. You have to remember, the F-15C has a 9G turning capability versus 6.5 to 7.0 G for the Tomcat. But the F-15C is strictly air-to-air, so there are trade-offs in capabilities between the two jets.They don't drop bombs, we do. Another thing: a lot of success in BFM has to do with the pilot's ability to maximize the jet's capability. Fortunately, the best trained guys who fly the F-15C are on our side!

The idea was to make at least one of the enemy fighters blow up in front of his wingman's face, thus making him think twice about pursuing us...

Our squadron did a night AIM-54 Phoenix shoot where we shot two Phoenixes at range against a drone. The shots were staggered by about 2 miles, one right after the other. Our lead safes, while on NVG's, followed both missiles toward the target. They reported back that the first Phoenix was "Boola Boola", meaning a direct hit and completely destroying the drone. They said what happened next was pretty amazing. The second Phoenix quickly made an adjustment off what was left of the drone and hit the largest remaining part. Remember, this 1,000lb missile is traveling at Mach 3.0 and only a couple of miles behind the first missile, so there was very little time for the missile to react. I guess the Ordies had programmed it for "pulverization mode". The good thing about the Phoenix was its range. We used to brief that we would shoot one Phoenix at "range" (and I won't say what that range was, but it was far) into any unresolved group of aircraft declared hostile. The idea was to make at least one of the enemy fighters blow up in front of his wingman's face, thus making him think twice about pursuing us. The bad thing about the Phoenix was it's old technology, which made it cumbersome and sometimes not function properly. It required its own cooling pump and sometimes the rocket motor wouldn't fire, making the missile fall dead off the rails. This earned it the not so glamorous nickname "Phoenie-Bomb". It's hard to say whether the Tomcat would have benefited from the AIM-120. Certainly a newer missile with newer technology would have been a great addition, but could it have been adapted to the platform and the AWG-9 without a huge cost?

The scary part about landing on the boat at night is everybody has a scary story. That's A LOT of scary stories...

People always talk about how difficult it is to land on the boat, but I think that idea should be broadened. Most don't realize how DAMN difficult it is to simply get launched off the pointy end, go fly a mission with live weapons, get to marshal with enough gas for an approach AND THEN attempt a crashed landing on a floating, moving object at night and in bad weather. There are so many moving parts to carrier operations at sea. Space is such a premium, the boat becomes the world's worst Rubik's cube: in the hangar bay, on the flight deck, and in the confined operating sea spaces. Gas is as scarce as water is in the Sahara; the only tanker is another Super Hornet and he only has enough gas to give you 1.8 passes at the ship (BTW, .8 passes doesn't help you much). Simple maintenance and parts supply becomes much more restrictive. There's very little room to work on the jet and your parts are whatever the boat has in its stock. Finally, the boat has the requirement to launch aircraft while still being a ship—both from a training perspective and an operational perspective. When your runway has to float, cook everyone a meal 4 times a day, and do a bunch of laundry using nuclear power—it just adds another layer of operational difficulty. I'm glad I don't have any more night traps. Go stand in one corner of a really dark room with a small pen light at the opposite end. Look through a paper towel tube searching for that light. If you find it, that's what the boat looks like at night from 20 miles. The scary part about landing on the boat at night is everybody has a scary story. That's A LOT of scary stories. However, landing on the boat at night is what sets us apart from every other Navy (and Air Force) in the world. I don't know which is worse, being the guy in front who has control of the jet or the guy in back who only has control of the ejection seat. Thankfully, I rode along with some outstanding pilots during the majority of my night traps.

The final year of the demo and the Tomcat's sundown were bitter sweet...

I guess everybody gets 15 minutes of fame in life and I was lucky enough to spend mine strapped into the most iconic fighter in the world. The Commanding Officer of VF-101, Paul "Butkus" Haas, picked "Rocco" Tangredi and I to fly the final F-14 Tomcat Demo in front of the home crowd at NAS Oceana, Virginia, and it was one hell of a ride. I like to think that flying the Tomcat Demo was pretty much within the capability of every Tomcat pilot and RIO who had a reasonable amount of time in the jet. There was nothing special about us in terms of skill, we just worked hard and got lucky. Out of the 4 of us selected for the final year, two guys went on to become Blue Angels and the other two flew the very last Tomcat Demo. It would be fitting to say Rocco and I got a decent consolation prize. The Tomcat Demo was always a crowd favorite (probably right behind the Blues in terms of popularity) and it even amazed Tomcat pilots themselves. I remember talking with "Lucky" Riley one time about the dirty (landing gear extended) doubleImmelmann. Lucky said he was watching a practice show and he incredulously remarked to himself, "they do an Immelmann dirty?!! Oh my. And then they do another one on top of that one???" I told him we got a Flap warning light during the second Immelmann, meaning we were over speeding the flaps. The damn jet was GAINING ENERGY in an upside down dirty configuration!!! Those GE-110 engineswere impressive. The final year of the demo and the sundown were bitter sweet. You knew it was the last time a lot of folks were ever going to see the jet fly. Some of my favorite shows included Ft. Lauderdale, Chicago, and my hometown show at the Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base. It's always fun to perform in front of family and friends. When we taxied by the crowd I would look for my dad. He is an old University of Texas Longhorn grad, so when I spotted him I would give him the Hook 'em Horns sign from the jet, that way he knew I saw him and my Mom. There were tons of Tomcat fans who reached out to us before and after the final show. We had folks from Europe and even Japan travel to see us in the last year of the demo. It's been nine years and people still occasionally contact me asking for autographs. People always say it was their favorite jet and I believe it. That's a pretty impressive following for the Big Fighter. There is a great caption in the book Bye Bye Baby about our show at Nellis Air Force Base where the F-22 made its first airshow appearance. I can't do the caption justice, so you'll have to read it yourself, but I think it captures the essence of how we went out with a bang in our final year.

Tyler's note: The excerpt from Bye Bye Baby Smokin is referring to is this:

"I was at the big Nellis Air Show, and everybody was buzzing about the first public demo of the F-22. Lots of generals in the bleachers, the whole deal. The F-22 was just plain lame. Hard deck of 1000 feet AGL, weak turns, no high-speed passes. Like they're afraid to break the thing, which they were. Who's up next on the schedule? Why, the Tomcat, of course. These guys just beat the place up. Flogged this Air Force base mercilessly. The crowd goes bananas, and I'm yelling along with them. Tell me who those two lunatics were, and I'll buy them a cocktail."

–Brian "Punchy" Shul, SR-71 Blackbird Pilot

I don't recommend, I DEMAND that you buy Bye Bye Baby and read for yourself this and the many other funny, terrifying and thrilling accounts from the Tomcat's long career.

The Super Hornet is an awesome aircraft, but I fear a lot of its greatness comes from technology...

The best way to describe the differences in the two platforms is to use the analogy of a muscle car to a mini-van, with the Tomcat being the former and the Super Hornet being the latter. The muscle car doesn't have much to it in the way of fancy technology, just some raw speed and the coolness of a Steve McQueen movie, but it gets the job done. The mini van on the other hand is a very nice car, complete with DVR's for the kids, Air Conditioning, power windows, and lots of places to put your sippy cup. It's a great car—-but it's still a mini-van. Don't get me wrong, the Super Hornet is an awesome aircraft, but I fear a lot of its greatness comes from technology. In the Tomcat, I think you had to be a better aviator because the technology just wasn't there. It was up to the aircrew to maximize its performance (or minimize it if you sucked). Conversely, in a Super Hornet loaded withAPG-79 (AESA radar),  MIDS   (advanced data link), ATFLIR (advanced targeting pod),AIM-9X (high-off boresight air-to-air missile) and JHMCS (helmet mounted display), you can be a sub-par aviator and let the technology pick up the slack. I don't want to completely slight the Super Hornet crowd. They've been given a great airplane and are doing great things with it even as this is being written (the USS George Bush is currently underway readying for Iraq). But the level of commitment, money, time, and effort it takes to get a guy up to speed and maintain proficiency in all mission areas is a pretty difficult challenge. Furthermore, I am concerned that what we've come to in the last few years with only the Super Hornet in the carrier aviation fleet is an aircraft and aircrew that are "jacks of all trades, masters of none". Every aviator will tell you that your skills erode very quickly if not practiced. Unfortunately, it's pretty tough to practice every mission, on every flight, every time you fly, especially in our current political and financial environment.

That thing can make one hell of a bat turn...

We've really made a huge leap in technology over the past 10 years. AESA   radars along with the AIM-9X, MIDS, and JHMCS have completely revolutionized fighter aircraft. The Air Force will balk and throw "stealth" in there as a quality, but they don't land on carriers. My Maintenance Master Chiefs would/will love that corrosion control program (on the F-35C). If you have a Super with AESA, you've reached the pinnacle of the jet's capabilities. The air-to-air mode is superior to anything I ever saw in the Tomcat, particularly in terms of user friendliness. The air to ground mode has superb resolution. The radar can in theory, run air-to-air and air-to-ground simultaneously. I like to think of the AESA as a snow plow that catches snow in the air while also moving it off the ground. Pretty awesome if you ask me. If we were not making revolutionary improvements to our inventory you would have to be worried. Probably even more revolutionary is the AIM-9X with a JHMCS used in the WVR (dogfight) arena. Imagine flying in spread formation at a mile apart, looking over your right shoulder and designating the guy you are about to fight. After "FIGHTS ON" is called, the next words out of your mouth could be "FOX-2" (launching of a short ranged missile). Yikes! That thing can make one hell of a bat turn. If you could add anything to a jet that would make a significant weapons impact it would probably be a powerful and robust Infrared Search & Track (IRST) system. Technology has figured out how to hide from radar, but we haven't really figured out how to hide or diffuse heat very well. An IRST with some decent range and ability to avoid ground clutter could be a game changer.Unfortunately, we might still be at the concept stage with that idea.

Tyler's note: The Super Hornet will be fitted with an IRST on its centerline tank in the near future, the USAF is actively debating fielding a IRST for its fighter aircraft, namely the F-15C, as well.

You are still a co-pilot, not just R2D2 in the back...

The hardest part for new WSO's (Weapon Systems Officers) is to not get "sucked inside" the cockpit by all of your sensors. You are still a co-pilot, not just R2D2 in the back. I used to tell new guys to strive for looking 50% inside the jet and 50% outside the jet. By looking outside you build air sense and situational awareness. This makes you a better crew member/co-pilot, which is the ultimate objective. Unfortunately for new guys, the ratio was 90% inside, 10% outside, but that is why you train. I loved flying with the USMC at their Fleet Replenishment Squadron (what RAGs are called now), VFMAT-101, in Miramar. We had an exceptional bunch of guys as instructors there—both Navy and USMC. It's so frustrating that the Navy gave Miramar up because it is THE premier location for flying fighters. It's proximity to San Clemente Island for Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP), El Centro for live bombing, and a TACTS range for air-to-air engagements, combined with 350 days a year of great weather make it a dream. Oh, and by the way—when you land—you are in San Diego. I feel lucky to have experienced it like the Tomcat bubbas did in the late 1980s. The two services have different approaches to their air power assets. The USMC is all about Close Air Support and protecting Marines on the ground. The USMC's mission is quick strike, knock down the door. They really emphasize the Air-to-Ground mission with the Hornet being one of many assets in the Marine Air-Ground Task Force (MAGTF). The Navy adds more balance into their approach with Hornet missions. The USN has to protect the CVN/strike group, a mission that calls for a more defensive mindset than the USMC's. Additionally, there are numerous other critical missions such as surface search, self-contained large force strike packages and close air support missions.

The bottom line concern is does the F-35 meet our needs for the price...

We have some real challenges with the F-35. In fact as I write this, the entire JSF fleet has been grounded for an engine fire . Not a good thing at this stage of development, especially considering its past history. When the B variant   breached Nunn-McCurdy (a large cost overrun) back in 2010, the program was really struggling. To me, the problems with the B version seemed pretty simple—the more parts that move the more things break! Unfortunately, there is not a good answer for the problems with the other two versions. In the F-35's team's defense, we are really building 3 different jets. Furthermore, there are some serious international relations issues (maybe self inflicted) that complicate matters. Fortunately, we have some really great, sharp, capable people working on the project and doing their best to make this program succeed. We desperately need it to succeed. It's a testament to the USA's ingenuity and capability. However, when you step back and take a strategic look at the program, the bottom line concern is does the F-35 meet our needs for the price? I would say the jury has not yet made up their mind on this question, but much like the OJ trial, they are tired of sitting in court waiting for the lawyers to finish their case.

Drones are cheaper than fighters, they don't get sick like pilots, and most of all, they don't have a guaranteed pension...

UCAV's and helo's are the future. In 25 to 30 years, you better be able to hover or be good at video games. This is because your best chance of flying will be in a helicopter or flying a drone from the proverbial phone booth. UCAV's also make financial sense. Drones are cheaper than fighters, they don't get sick like pilots, and most of all, they don't have a guaranteed pension. A good friend of mine and former Tomcat pilot Greg "Drano" Malandrino, along with Jeff "Lick" McClean wrote an excellent article for Foreign Policy magazine that describes the best and hopefully most probable outcome for integrating drones into our current force. Additionally, I recently read a great book called The Second Machine Agethat speaks to our world's ongoing rapid technology development and how humans need to

work with the machine to unleash our full technology capability and ingenuity. Drano and Jeff's article is an excellent discussion and application on how our battlefield integration with UAV's captures the idea of working with the machine.

He's a little ornery, but very sharp and witty and has a motor that puts a lot of 20 something's to shame...

What's the old saying, "I'd rather be lucky than good?" Well, I was very lucky to be selected as John McCain's Legislative Fellow for 2011. The most common question I get is "What's he like?" and I always answer the same way: he's kind of like your grandpa in that he's a little ornery, but very sharp and witty and has a motor that puts a lot of 20 something's to shame. I think he would have made a great president. Unfortunately, he's going to have to settle for being a Great American, but that's pretty darn good. I was fortunate to collaborate in writing his remarks for the 100 th Anniversary of Naval Aviation at Tailhook and additionally be the assigned staff member during his visit to the convention. One of the best meetings during our time there was between the Senator and his old Commanding Officer, Admiral "Doc" Abbot (then in his 90s). They probably had not seen each other in close to 40 years. Time stood still for a moment as the two talked like they were back together on the USS Intrepid. I don't think I've ever heard the Senator say "sir" so much in one conversation. Inside the Beltway is really its own battlefield. Peeking behind the curtain you realize how difficult it is to affect change and how most issues don't just have a left or right view point, but a full 360 degrees of viewpoints. I have faith in the system but unfortunately, a lot of American's currently don't. Every good idea should not be a law, so the checks and balances are there for a reason—even if it seems like nothing ever gets done. The financial challenges within the DoD and Navy match the same financial challenges currently in front of the country as a whole. Paying for pensions and medical care inside the military sounds a lot like paying for Social Security and Health care out on Main Street USA. With a finite amount of money, lawmakers and DOD leadership are looking for pathways to curtail spending. The problem is when those cuts dig into an earned benefit. I think everyone saw the potential political suicide last year when Congress voted to reduce working age retirees' cost of living adjustments.

I don't think we will ever have a plane that captures and defines a culture as strongly as the F-14 Tomcat did...

I always like to say there are two kinds of people in this world: those who were a part of it (the Tomcat Community) and those who wish they were. I don't think we will ever have a plane that captures and defines a culture as strongly as the F-14 Tomcat did. It was camaraderie, hard work, fun, rock and roll, and sex appeal all rolled into one. Sure we had a movie made about us, an awesome looking jet, and a fan base that could rival the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and Notre Dame all rolled into one (well maybe not Notre Dame). But the culture was much more than Tom Cruise riding his motorcycle down the runway—it was a sense of teamwork, pride, and family. Our maintenance personnel loved the jet probably more than the pilots and RIOs who flew in it. A lot has been made about how the maintenance hours on the Tomcat were a factor in its retirement and how it was often broken. Let's face it, when you slam a jet down on the deck of an aircraft carrier and then launch it off the front end again—doing this repeatedly in a saltwater environment—you are likely to bend and break a few things. Additionally, when your logistical parts supply line stops at the waterline and you aren't able to drive down to the depot and pick another part off the shelf, your ability to repair jets becomes a pretty big challenge. The Air Force does not have to face these types of challenges and it's only a matter of time, if not now, for the Hornet crowd to face the same problems. I don't want to dispute how tough it was to keep it flying, but I will say everyone who worked on the Tomcat felt like it was an earned privilege. Furthermore, I have been in Tomcat squadrons with sortie success rates better than the Hornet. I know if

you asked Master Chief Steve "Woody" Woods, and probably a couple hundred others, if they wanted to come out of retirement to get the plane flying again, the word "yes" would come out of their mouths probably before you finished your sentence. We asked a lot from our maintenance folks and they delivered.

Guys use the term "Bag Strike" when you go out on the town in your flight suit...

Did the flight suit and the Tomcat's notoriety help with the ladies? Hell yes. When you have a face for radio, a flight suit tends to help make your Goonies appearance fade into the background. What does Jerry Seinfeld say? The actual percentage of people considered "good looking" is around 4%. Well, for the other 96% of us, you better have something that sets you apart! You've still got to bring a little personality to the table, but for most fighter guys that is not too much of a problem. Guys use the term "Bag Strike" when you go out in town in your flight suit. One fall we were asked to do the pregame flyby at a Kansas City Chiefs game at Arrowhead. We arrived in KC earlier in the weekend and hit all the BBQ joints and local bars. On Sunday, after performing the flyby, we were invited up into the owner's box (Mr. Lamar Hunt), got a tour of the stadium, met a few cheerleaders—pretty much the works. Let's just say there was a lot of "bag striking" going on that weekend and even a few confirmed kills.

Most guys and gals who fly fighters know their strengths and hide their weaknesses...

A lot of people think we are all arrogant, and while that is probably true, I would rather use the term "self-confident." Most guys and gals who fly fighters know their strengths and hide their weaknesses. It's simply human nature and people do it to survive in a Ready Room environment. Some guys use the "volume makes you more correct" mantra, as long as I talk loud and often, people think I know what I am talking about. Most are family guys who don't get to spend enough time at home. With deployments stretching 9-10 months, family time is precious and dwindling. It's tough for guys who have kids because you don't get to see enough of them. I think this is going to be a major issue where more money (i.e. bonuses) won't solve the problem. Leadership better take a hard look at dwell/rotation time or there will be lots of MBA programs filling up with ex-Navy personnel. I think for the most part women have integrated well into the culture. There have certainly been a few women who probably should not have been fighter pilots; but for every one of the women who was not cut out to do the job, there were probably also two guys there who you were scratching your head about. It's all about doing your job and making an impact. If you can do that—you're on the team. As far as how I think we can improve the Navy from a fighter crew's perspective, let a cruise experienced Junior Officer (JO) provide some strategic level input. There are way too many good ideas being drawn on an O Club bar napkin every Friday night that should not be thrown out Saturday morning with the beer bottles. The Navy chain of command needs to listen from below A LOT MORE than it currently does, or the Navy is going to have a difficult time over the next 10-15 years, particularly in regards to retention.

More about LCDR Ruzicka:

"Smokin" Joe Ruzicka is a recovering Naval Aviator, much like his old boss John McCain. He currently flies a desk at the Navy International Programs Office in Washington D.C. Look for him to make a run for Congress in 2020. Foxtrot Alpha would like to thank LCDR Ruzicka for spending the time to share in his own words his thoughtful insights and fantastic stories with our readership, and thank you Joe for your service and those fantastic Tomcat Demos as well! We wish you well in your future

endeavors and please come back and share another story or two or chime in a hot topic whenever you feel like it.

This Topgun Instructor Watched The F-14 Go From Tomcat To 'Bombcat'

We’re blasting along through the bumpy mid-day air at a brisk 480 knots, 500 feet above the desert. The ride is rough, and the purposeful rumble of our engines reminds me that it takes a lot of power to push this machine through the dense air at 800 feet per second. Fortunately, we have a lot of power. To my left at about a half mile is another Tomcat, and a mile ahead are two more. We fly in an offset box formation, each of us carrying two Mk 84 2,000-pound bombs. I’m the radar intercept officer (RIO) in an F-14A Tomcat.

“Checkmates, tac left, reference 287.”

At the waypoint we crisply roll into almost 90 degrees of bank. My pilot pulls to 5G and in a few seconds we roll out on the new heading. We are on our way to our ground targets. Below us, cars and trucks cruise Interstate 10 at 1/8 our speed. I can just imagine the sound of four Tomcats in MIL power (full power without afterburner) and I wonder if anyone is looking up to see their tax dollars at work. They probably couldn’t see the bombs, but with our wings swept back they could tell we’re moving out. It’s a short segment of our flight and in just over a minute we turn south. Sorry, folks, airshow’s over.

[Editor’s Note: He gave us an  incredible look inside life as a Topgun instructor during the filming of the famous cult classic by the same name, now our good friend and author of the fabulous Topgun Days, Dave “Bio” Baranek is working on his second and third books, and has come back to Foxtrot Alpha to recollect on the intricacies of the mighty F-14 Tomcat’s evolution and his own career that evolved right alongside it.]

What It Was Like Being A Topgun Instructor While They Filmed Top Gun

On the final leg, activity and crew coordination in each cockpit increase. Suddenly we reach the IP (initial point), lead selects afterburner and pulls to begin a pop-up delivery. Dash 2, Dash 3, and finally my aircraft pop-up in turn. The F-14 – yes, even the A-model – is powerful and responsive at this speed and altitude, and we climb quickly. A 4,000-pound load doesn’t hurt performance much and soon we roll over and dive while my pilot visually acquires the target. I back him up on airspeed, dive angle, and altitude. My stick is a nugget, but very sharp; he has it all under control. The bombs come off with a couple of quick thumps, and we recover from the dive with a 5G pull to stay outside of its fragmentation pattern. These are live bombs and as we climb away the pilot rolls so we can see the impact area. We are rewarded: even in the blazing sun you can see the fireball of the 2,000 pound Mk 84s. That was in December 1996, during an air-to-ground training detachment to El Centro, California. I was executive officer of the VF-211 Fighting Checkmates. We were a hard-working team of 30 officers, 16 chief petty officers, and 200 enlisted, operating 14 F-14A Tomcats. If I were philosophical, I would have pondered how things had changed in the F-14 community... and how much had not changed. But I wasn’t thinking about that, because in nine months I would become the commanding officer and the squadron would deploy for Operation Southern Wat. I had a lot on my mind.

On Tomcat Fighting In Its Early Form

When I joined my first F-14 squadron in 1981 (VF-24), the A-model was still relatively new and some US Navy squadrons were still flying Phantoms. The potential threats that we most often trained for were the MiG-17 and MiG-21, which were not match of a threat beyond visual range (BVR), but could be a handful if you got engaged within visual range (WVR). Since we always expected to be outnumbered, and with the lessons from the air war over Vietnam still fresh, we spent a lot of our training fuel and time on ACM – air combat maneuvering, or dogfighting. We would use the AWG9, which at the time was by far the most capable radar in a fighter, to paint the picture of what is out there and get us to the merge. Our weapon during the intercept was the AIM-7 Sparrow, which was much improved since its flawed debut in Vietnam and had become a reliable and versatile weapon. But in my experience we often wouldn’t kill-remove adversaries based on pre-merge shots because we wanted to maximize the number we faced in the within visual range engagement. As a new RIO I changed radar modes to compensate for the limitations of the AWG9’s two modes: pulse (low PRF) and pulsed Doppler (high PRF). Each mode had strengths and weaknesses and I think most Radar Intercept Officers switched between them as an intercept progressed. It seemed to be a sign of a good RIO. I used a lot of my brain processing time develop a good picture. In other words, “RIO technique.” We fought anything we could: F-4s, F-5s, F-15s, A-4s, A-7s, and more. There were no Hornets yet, and few F-16s. When the F-14 was clean (no AIM-54 rails on the belly and no external tanks) and light on fuel, with all systems working, it was a very capable fighter. With more stores and fuel we paid a penalty in maneuverability. The Tomcat was strongest below 20,000 feet, and lower was better. But of course the soft deck and hard deck safety restrictions usually kept us from going too low. A Tomcat fighting in the thick air below 5,000 feet altitude maneuvered the way you always wanted it to! In an engagement there were many moving parts. In the front seat, the pilot was primarily working stick and throttles, which included almost all essential switches because the F-14 benefited from switchology and cockpit ergonomics lessons that were learned the hard way in the skies over Vietnam. (These are now known as “human factors” and “pilot-vehicle interface.”) The Tomcat pilot used the rudder pedals as necessary, such as for roll control at lower airspeed. He had a HUD but it didn’t show flight information effectively so he checked the instrument panel if necessary – but with a little experience pilots rarely needed to look inside during an engagement. Depending on the scenario, the RIO’s priority would be defensive visual scan (behind the 3-9 line), facilitated by the 360-degree view from the cockpit. Any good RIO could see between the tails, though it was hard at 6.5G! The RIO coordinated with the pilot to keep track of bandits and wingmen through effective communications and handoffs.The RIO’s eyes were seemingly everywhere at once, watching the bandit being chased, watching airspeed, watching altitude, watching fuel state, keeping sight of wingmen, clearing their six o’clock, as well as our own. “Watch right four o’clock low.” “Got him. Sluggo is engaged at left eight.” “Visual.” The RIO always had to be ready to activate VSL – vertical scan lock-on, one of the most useful of the radar’s dogfight modes – when an adversary was coming into the scan volume off the nose of the jet. Employing cockpit resource management principles, the RIO would act as copilot, keeping tabs on fuel, navigation, range time – whatever it took to win the engagement and complete the mission safely. Meanwhile, the jet itself had a lot of moving parts. The TF30 engines were in burner a lot, but pilot handling of the throttles was similar to my radar work during the intercept: compensating for limitations, doing the best with what you’ve got. The variable geometry wings swept back and forth automatically, programmed via Mach number, while the slats and maneuvering flaps did their best to maximize lift. These auto-maneuvering devices significantly enhanced F-14 maneuverability. There was a lot going on in those engagements. Then there was the fact that most O4s (Lieutenant Commanders) and above in most squadrons had Vietnam combat experience, with some having hundreds of combat missions under their belt. Even if a pilot or RIO wasn’t King Kong, he brought a healthy dose of aviating experience that was valuable to us nuggets.

On Carrying The AIM-54 Phoenix

Most anyone who has ever had an interest in military aviation knows that F-14s carried AIM-54s, and that the Phoenix (affectionately known as a 1,000-pound wingman) was famous for its long range and large warhead, as well as active terminal guidance and the ability to have multiple Phoenixes in flight simultaneously. This gave us impressive capability, especially compared to other air-to-air missiles in the early 1980s. Yes, the AIM-54A had some employment limitations, but it repeatedly destroyed fighter-size targets in test shots. Let me digress to say how disappointed I am that the U.S. Navy has no real-world Phoenix kills. Anyway, the penalties for this capability included weight and drag. We would carry the Phoenix on the belly (also known as the tunnel), and that required adapter rails that weighed 400 lbs each and added drag. Each missile itself weighed 1,000 lbs. But the reason we didn’t use them against fighters was policy: carriers planned to save AIM-54s for use against a raid by a Soviet bomber regiment. On my first tour we were never in a real-world counter-air situation so I don’t know for sure, but that’s how we trained: against enemy fighters it was AIM-7s, AIM-9s, and the gun. Let me segue to the “outer” air battle. If you look at literature from the period, you’ll see that the F-14’s power projection/fighter mission was emphasized, but effectiveness in the maritime air superiority (MAS) mission was also an essential capability. This was a mission where the most effective training was done in simulators, mainly due to complexity. It would have been hard to assemble a realistic number of targets and jammers. Because so much of the information was displayed to the RIO, he had to take the tactical lead for MAS missions. I want to talk about actual flying today so I won’t say much more about MAS, except for a few parting thoughts. In Fleet squadrons, when we flew live MAS training events the most valuable portions were command and control and tanking. Sitting in my cockpit, I would try to imagine dozens of Phoenix contrails streaking through the sky from my own jet and my wingmen.

On The Evolution Of Tomcat Tactics

My first squadron tour lasted a little over three years (1981-84), then I was selected to serve as a Topgun instructor, and I returned to the F-14 community in 1987. I joined the Bounty Hunters of VF-2, deploying aboard USS Ranger. To set the stage, West Coast carriers still deployed to the North Arabian Sea as we had during my first tour. But by this time US Navy ships were escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz under Operation Earnest Will, and the carrier air wing was airborne for the duration of the oil tankers’ transit, to provide immediate response to any hostile acts. There was a realistic prospect of conflict with Iran, which would mean flying against F-4s, F-5s, and F-14s, as well as I-HAWK SAMs. Without speculating on Iranian military skill, I will just say we didn’t dismiss the threat. Around the world there had been developments during the 1980s that affected our training and tactics. Among the most significant was the proliferation of forward-quarter capable MiGs and Sukhois. Against the MiG-21 and previous threats we were essentially immune from attack until the bandit was behind our 3-9 line. This may seem like ancient history, but it shows the advantage US fighters held until the early 1980s. Our response to the Flogger was gradual. I participated in a series of test flights to explore the Flogger threat in 1982, but those flights didn’t include tactics designed to counter threat missiles, so they were like the Gunfight at the OK Corral, and they proved the need for a whole new approach to the intercept. Some of that was taking place while I was at Topgun, and by the time I got back to the Fleet it was becoming well-established. Basic information on BVR tactics is familiar to enthusiasts. Think back to when it was new, however, when we had to admit we had a vulnerability that was something we could mitigate if we learned the details of AIM-7 performance compared to the Soviet AA-7 (and later the AA-10). We learned how to optimize our launch range and reduce the enemy’s by working against his radar and his missile. Our training became more realistic than it had been. Of the two adversary aircraft available, the F-5 provided the better simulation of a MiG-23since it could at least go supersonic, though it couldn’t match the Flogger’s incredible acceleration and speed. In engagements, F-5 pilots limited their G to represent the Flogger’s relatively poor turn performance, so once engaged (past the merge) the Tomcat had a real advantage. As mentioned before, much of my earlier training seemed to focus on radar technique, but facing Floggers required additional skills such as evaluating our mission and how to reduce vulnerability. Sometimes we launched AIM-7s and maneuvered to avoid the merge. One day a senior officer was flying with the adversaries, expecting to mix it up with Tomcats like we all did back in the day. But the F-14s took shots, timed them out, and bugged (ran). In the debrief he asked, “What the

hell was that?” Using the common term, our flight lead respectfully said, “We were flying counter-Flogger tactics, sir.” With a red face, the senior said, “Well I call them chicken-shit tactics!” No one said anything for a few heartbeats and we gingerly finished the debrief. When the senior left, the adversary lead, a skilled and respected lieutenant, said, “You guys did a good job.” In reality, the transition in tactics was more fun than it sounds. For one thing, it was cool to fly intercepts at Mach 1 or higher against supersonic F-5s. At this time in my career I had more than 1,600 F-14 hours and had been flying tactically for about seven years including time in Topgun F-5s, so I was very comfortable. Also, the general situation quickly improved. For one thing, we learned about valid shot criteria and much of that came from our Air Force brothers. My recollection was that we had been kind of cavalier regarding missile launches. Yes, we knew the envelopes well and had good cockpit indications, so most shots in training probably would have been good shots in combat, but we just didn’t have enough rigor in the debrief. So the Navy fighter community stepped up and started holding aircrew accountable for every trigger squeeze. I don’t know exactly where it started, but I heard it came from debriefs and exchanges with Air Force F-15s and it quickly spread through the Tomcat community. (This was more important when we were not onTACTS/ACMI, because that evaluates shots.) Many things started to become more standardized across the Services, such as the format of tactical communications and the nicknames and codewords we used for various tactics and weapons/countermeasure employment. They were all documented in the Topgun manual, which soon became the standard used for training and real world employment. Another improvement came from high-level Navy decision-makers who supported the F-16N. The first Navy Viper arrived at Topgun in June 1987, and they were quickly provided to all adversary squadrons. We finally had a radar-equipped high-performance aircraft that could replicate the current threat. This had been in work for years, and at times it seemed like we might get the F-20 Tigershark or an F-16 with a J79 engine. The way it turned out, I was proud of the Navy for putting the money into a very capable adversary aircraft. Of course it meant that I spent a lot of time at 6.5G in knife fights trying to kill F-16s, because you really couldn’t disengage. But you know what they say about good training, “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.”  Duke Cunningham   said that a lot.

How We Kept The Tomcat’s Claws Sharp

When we started to get serious about the threat, especially when the AA-10 Alamo arrived, we realized we had to employ AIM-54s against enemy fighters. So of course we began to train with them. I think the capability was in TACTS all along, we just never used it. Fortunately the Navy introduced the AIM-54C in 1987, when we really needed it. The Charlie corrected many shortcomings of the Alpha, in both outer air battle and closer-in tactical environments. With its long motor burn time, large warhead, and radar improvements, the AIM-54C was a tenacious missile. Again, it is too bad it doesn’t have a combat record. One of the coolest visuals I remember was from TACTS debriefs at Fallon, when a division of Tomcats launched AIM-54Cs against simulated Fulcrums at 30-plus miles. A few seconds after launch the debriefer rotated the view from overhead to horizontal, and there were four Phoenixes performing their trajectory-shaping climbs. AIM-54s were not 100% kills, but they sure started to reduce the threat as scenarios developed. Now we have the attitude and the tools. The Tomcat had been in Service more than ten years, and there was talk of an all-F-14D fleet: building new D-models and converting all As into Ds. The late 1980s was a great time to be in F-14s. One of the F-14’s more interesting systems was the TCS (television camera set). This was useful in many scenarios, and was actually integrated into the weapons system. For those who are not familiar with it, the TCS was a camera that could be slaved to the radar antenna and provided a gray-scale visual image to the aircrew. It had a fairly limited field of view and of course it was greatly affected by atmospheric haze, so it was most useful at high altitude where the air is clear. TCS grew out of the Vietnam experience of crews have difficulty obtaining visual identification (VID) of a radar target. The concept proved its value in AIMVAL/ACEVAL, but there was some problem with its fielding and I didn’t see it operationally until I got to my second Tomcat squadron. It was a fascinating system, and there are some great videos of it in action, but I don’t recall using it a lot in training engagements.

Why The F-15 Was One Of Our Toughest Opponents

Earlier I mentioned the Vietnam-experienced senior officers in my first squadron. The characters and personalities in a Navy fighter squadron are some the things I miss most. In VF-2 I was promoted to O4 and so I had to write fitness reports on junior officers. Fitreps had been an administrative burden in the early part of my career; no one likes doing that rigidly-formatted paperwork. But seeing these very talented and dedicated JOs, it was really a privilege to write fitreps on them. And in the years since then, several have advanced to impressive leadership positions. While talking about people, I also have to mention the sailors who gave the squadron its combat capability. Most junior officers quickly come to respect the ability and commitment of the sailors who work long hours in often unpleasant conditions (heat, noise, etc.) and keep coming back for more. Although I don’t have readiness rates to back it up, my perception was that aircraft mission capability was better during my second tour. This was likely the result of a combination of factors, such as newer block aircraft that received incremental improvements. Whatever the exact cause, I appreciated it! My recollection of these years may be affected by my own situation. I’d been fortunate to accumulate a good amount of flight time and experience, and I was in a squadron full of enthusiastic and capable pilots and RIOs. One of the flights I remember was above the Yuma TACTS Range, a 2vUNK (two versus unknown) hop against F-5s simulating Floggers. Tomcats were simulating an AIM-7/AIM-9 load, so our employment had to be spot-on. I was in Dash 2. Our section lead was good, but I had noticed that the RIO had a habit of locking the wrong target. We had a 30-mile-plus setup and as the intercept progressed, I saw that there were four bandits in a box formation, about 3 miles between the lead group and the trail. We were just topping 600 knots indicated and the F-5s were going about 550 for 1,150 knots combined closure speed. As we closed inside 20 miles the RIOs prepared to take radar locks for Sparrow launch. The lead RIO called his sort (the aircraft they locked in the enemy formation) over the radio. Even though we were closing at 2,000 feet each second, I quipped, “Lock anyone, Lead, I’ll get the other one.” In the end we had separate locks and two good kills. I felt like I was performing at the level that was expected of me. In preparing for this interview I pulled out the only video I have of a training intercept/engagement, and it happened to be a 2v2 against F-15s in 1988. Of course the F-15 was a challenge, which made it great training for us. (The video quality is poor due to its age and the F-14A’s crappy recorder.) It was a 30-mile initial setup, with Tomcats in combat spread (line abreast about two to three miles apart) and Eagles in trail formation (one in front of the other with a wide separation). Listening to the intercept, F-15 intercept comm was excellent; as a RIO, I thought, that’s how I want to sound. The engagement took place around 20,000’ (altitude) and started as two 1v1s, but we still had to be concerned with the other Eagle. About one minute after the merge my pilot got into position to launch an AIM-9 at an F-15, and I got this screen capture of the HUD video. As mentioned before the F-14 HUD wasn’t as good as other aircraft – you can see the lack of info displayed – but you can tell we’re in good position with Sidewinder (SW) selected. The image flickered a lot so the trigger-down cue has already gone. It’s only one frame out of two engagements, but it shows we would and could fight anyone. The F-15 was one of our toughest opponents; if you just compare the specs for the F-14 and F-15 you’ll see why. And F-15 pilots are well-trained (that’s how you get a combat record of 104 kills / 0 losses; I know many of those are non-US kills). There are stories of Tomcat crews (pilot and RIO) acting like they were a section, and in fact I did that, too. But for a straight-up 2v2, fighting Eagles required us to execute at near-perfection. That is what we should always do anyway, right? Radar work and comms in the intercept had to be spot-on. Once engaged, the Tomcat pilot had to keep his knots up to maintain options, and then know when it was worth it to give up energy for a shot, knowing there was another Eagle in the arena. I fought F-15s several times throughout my career and had a roughly even record, but the wins were never easy. Neither were the losses.

How The Tomcat Became The “Bombcat”

The F-14 faced challenges but like a real champ it fought until the end. One of the first reality-checks came in the 1980s with the simple realization that the Navy could not afford an all-F-14D fleet. F-14As continued to serve until 2003 and the final F-14D retired in 2006. This was all predestined when the Super Hornet was selected for development, signaling the end for the F-14 community. No need to go into that. It happened. In 1991 the F-14 community participated in some important ways in DESERT STORM, such as strike lead, escort, and TARPS. But for a variety of reasons, some good and some ugly, the F-14 did not show its full air-to-air capability during that war. I wasn’t there and this subject is covered elsewhere. On the plus side, the Navy learned a lot from its DESERT STORM experience. But

the news is not all bad. One of the less-obvious improvements to the F-14 fleet arrived in 2000 when the digital flight control system (DFCS) was installed. Providing enhanced maneuverability and improving some of the Tomcat’s messy low-speed handling characteristics by means of an aileron-rudder interconnect, DFCS was the realization of a dream from the early days of the program, when there was never quite enough funding. DFCS markedly improved the capability of all F-14s, allowing pilots to perform more aggressive maneuvers in dogfights such as pirouettes, and significantly reduced pilot workload during instrument approaches, eliminating the signature dutch roll of the earlier analogue AFCS equipped F-14A. I had my last Tomcat flight in 1998 and never flew a DFCS bird, but some authorities have said that the  F-14D with the big engines, new radar, and DFCS was finally the fighter we should have had all along. In my opinion the biggest change during the Tomcat’s career was when it assumed the strike fighter mission. Several commanders considered this over the years, and in fact we looked into it around 1988 when I was in VF-2. Air Wing TWO Commander (CAG) CAPT Chris “Boomer” Wilson wanted his F-14 squadrons (VF-1 and VF-2) to drop bombs. But we weren’t able to get approval. Other squadrons on both coasts made exploratory attempts at developing the F-14’s air-to-ground capability but it wasn’t until the A-6 retired that the Navy deployed a real “Bombcat.” Around the same time, the LANTIRN system that flew on F-15Es and F-16s was being podded for carriage on F-14s. Integration into the F-14 cockpit was straightforward, and the mission was eagerly embraced throughout the community. The first LANTIRN deployment was in 1996 (VF-103) – and with it the F-14 finally became a versatile precision strike-fighter. Connecting this to my own experience, when I left VF-2 in 1990 I was assigned staff jobs for several years. The extended time away from Tomcats was unexpected, and when I finally returned in 1996 it was almost a different world. The Flogger threat seemed almost quaint compared to Fulcrums and Flankers with AA-10s. Combine this with the strike-fighter mission and various systems changes, and I had a lot of catching up to do! The F-14 community took a confident and professional approach to these changes. One of the most visible signs of this was implementation of the Strike Fighter Weapons and Tactics (SFWT) syllabus, which greatly improved the quality of training for every Fleet pilot and RIO in all missions. In addition, SFARP (the Strike Fighter Advanced Readiness Program) and airwing predeployment training at NAS Fallon were much more challenging than I had experienced in the 1980s. But all of these changes bred a competitiveness in the junior officers, who strove for perfection. They signed up to fly fighters and wanted to be the best. I was very proud of the aviators I commanded in VF-211.

How We Kept The Tomcat Flying

It’s true that the Tomcat was a complex aircraft when introduced, andtwenty years later it was an older complex aircraft. But let me cite two published articles with information so readers can have some facts. In February 1993, US Naval Institute Proceedings published an article by F-14 pilot LT John Wood titled “F-14D Reliability Confounds Critics.” In this brief article he addresses many aspects of the F-14 program and the F-14D. The information I’ll mention was the direct maintenance man-hours per flight hour (MMH/FH) for his F-14 squadron, VF-11, in two types of Tomcats: for F-14As it was 31.3, and for the F-14D it was 17.8 – a significant decrease. Five years later (September 1998) Proceedings published an article by LT Patrick Porter that addressed Naval Aviation readiness from end to end: “A J.O. Looks at TacAir Readiness.” This was an insightful piece that leveraged LT Porter’s experience as a RIO and Quality Assurance officer in VF-211, when I was CO. Again, I will only mention the MMH/FH statistics. During the first few months of deployment our hard-working maintainers logged roughly 65 hours of maintenance for every flight hour, but they were working-off the effects of a very demanding turnaround training cycle on fourteen F-14As. After three months of hard work the situation improved, and we logged 37 MMH/FH at the end of deployment. LT Porter does an excellent job of analyzing causes, and it may be difficult to compare to other aircraft, but at least now some hard numbers are out there. In both cases, the credit goes to the men and women who kept the Tomcats flying: dedicated sailors with skilled leadership from senior petty officers and chief petty officers.

On Being A Squadron Commander

On a personal level, it was a great honor, being placed in command of this impressive military capability. Over the preceding years as I advanced in rank, there were times when I thought being a squadron commander must be impossibly tough, and other times when I thought, “I could do that, and do it well.” And then when I pinned on that command star (sometimes called the sheriff’s badge) and realized I was the CO, it was challenging and also rewarding. I was fortunate to have talented and very dedicated people in VF-211 at all levels, and I tried hard to be the CO they needed. We deployed on USS Nimitz in 1997-98 in support of Operation Southern Watch (OSW). The Iraqi air force had been violating the southern no-fly zone before we arrived, and we actually skipped a port call to arrive in the Persian Gulf early. I was very excited that we might get to shoot, but as soon as we arrived the violations stopped. It would be speculation on my part about whether they recognized the presence of the Tomcat’s AWG9 and didn’t want to deal with Phoenix. Our OSW missions consisted of counter-air patrols of the no-fly zone, strike packages, and TARPS (Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System). Our LANTIRN pods were fantastic: easy to use and reliable. We also performed regular practice strikes with the Marine Corps, Air Force, and allies. These were large and complex operations where positioning and timing were critical. We could see the other assets on radar and visually, and I was just amazed at how smoothly these events ran, with zero communications. It demonstrated how well-trained our forces were. An OSW mission was a demonstration of the precision and execution of modern air combat. Before launch we were required to have secure radio and all systems operating. We then launched about a dozen aircraft: Tomcats, Hornets, Prowlers, a Hawkeye, and sometimes a Viking. The OSW package flew up the gulf to the tanker orbit or went right over Iraq to assume station – all under very tight control to ensure positive identification. We patrolled in our assigned box. For me, I shared time between the radar (of course) and using the LANTIRN to look at the terrain below, sometimes identifying targets, other times just looking for an interesting structure. We had excellent system reliability, and we needed it. The flights were about 4 hours each, usually with two refuelings from a KC-10, and then it was back to the Nimitz. The Navy increased the F-14’s max trap weight from 51,800 pounds to 54,000, which may not seem like much but it added a bit more safety factor to our recovery fuel, or meant we could bring back the ordnance we carried. Several times we ramped-up the excitement by “riding shotgun” for U-2s while they flew high above Iraq. Of course we didn’t escort them in any sense, they were miles above us, but we provided a response package should Iraqi forces make any offensive moves. They threatened to, but never did. It was all fairly routine. Except we were flying over hostile terrain with live weapons as part of an international operation. Professionalism and consistent high performance were required on every flight.

Parting Shots

The F-14 served the country for more than three decades, from the closing days of Vietnam and into the Global War on Terror and went through an amazing evolution in that time period. The Tomcat as a strike-fighter, with Phoenix, Sparrow, Sidewinder, and bombs. Who in those early F-14 squadrons in the 1970s would’ve imagined that? Like all aircraft it has fans and detractors. But for those who worked on it and flew it, I think all would proudly proclaim their association with the mighty Tomcat. I’m in that group.