Alliance Aggressor Squadron

[BTBackseater]

Anyone hear abot Perot starting an agressor squadron with MIG's at Alliance? A friend told me he say what he thought were MIG -27's or MIG-29's out there

[K5DH]

There's a gentleman in Delaware who has two MiG 21s and two MiG 23s based at New Castle County Airport near Wilmington (airport code ILG). Some people have WA-A-A-AY too much disposable income!

Dean the impoverished

[Bill Kistler]

Could just team up with the Cold War Museum at Lancaster TX and get their 23 flying.

Bill.

[AirJimL2]

The plan is to use ex-CAF CF-5s.

Jim

[Randy Haskin]

The plan is to use ex-CAF CF-5s.

Jim

The Perot operation with CF-5s (my understanding is that they were Norwegian F-5s...) is a lead-in fighter training program designed to suncontract for the USAF.

[Cripes A Mighty]

Ztex posted this pic in the airports to avoid thread.

So this is the Perot aggressors?

[AirJimL2]

The Perot operation with CF-5s (my understanding is that they were Norwegian F-5s...) is a lead-in fighter training program designed to suncontract for the USAF.

Randy,

At least some, if not all of the aircraft, are ex-CAF. These were the airplanes the CAF upgraded with state of the art avionics and they were then almost immediately retired. The CF-116s were moved from Mountainview last year and are at Northrop Grumman for IRAN. Three or four have been sold to private owners as warbirds.

As for what exactly the program is, I'm sure you know more then me, but I understood it was for lead-in training for UAE pilots.

Jim

P.S.: Cripes - I'm pretty sure those are real US military aggressors.

[RickH]

The UAE contract was how ATSI got started.

[Randy Haskin]

As for what exactly the program is, I'm sure you know more then me, but I understood it was for lead-in training for UAE pilots.

The actual genesis behind the program was the post 9/11 load of foreign students who flooded the USAF's fighter lead-in program. Most of these spots are given to countries who buy US equipment, or they're given away as military aid -- it used to be called the "MAP" or "Military Assistance Program", although today in an interesting bit of quasi-Orwellian newspeak the program is called the "Security Assistance Program."

Anyhow, these students turned out to be a drag on the normal student training flow in the USAF program. It was a bad deal for both the US and foreign students -- the foreign students generally needed a little more assistance, which sometimes meant extra sorties. The problem is that sorties are a finite resource, and the more allocated to foreign students the less can be allocated to US students.

So, a couple of retired USAF instructors pitched the idea to create a private fighter lead-in squadron to take the burden of the foreign students.

Since Rick brought up ATSI, the Perot guys have made every effort to do things the "right" way, unlike ATSI. They've had to work with the FAA very closely throughout the project, as they are doing lots of unusual things -- being able to have civilians instruct foreign nationals how to dogfight using ex-foreign fighters while being able to have 'hot' MOAs for non-military traffic. ATSI apparently got into some trouble because they didn't bother to include the FAA in their plans and operated in a rather gray-area.

So...the point of this is that the UAE has some of these lead in training slots allocated as part of their purchase of the Block 60 F-16, and they were aiming to be the first customer for the Alliance guys.

The last I had any contact or information with those guys was 2006, so things may have changed since then.

[Randy Haskin]

So this is the Perot aggressors?

Those look like plain old vanilla Navy F-5 aggressors.

[Ztex]

The F-5's I posted are Navy birds.

I have not heard about the Perot angle to this Alliance training deal. There has been some buzz on the foreign pilot training but no mention of airplanes, and the "news" paper talked like this was a USAF deal not private.

There has been no sign of any airframes at the airport.

[RickH]

ATAC looks like they will be spooling up on some additional contracts. They will be using single seat aircraft though.