Cope Thunder

As I’ve mentioned earlier, Cope Thunder was up until recently, PACOM’s version of Red Flag.  With the eruption of MT Pinatubo and subsequent evacuation of US Forces from the PI, Cope Thunder was moved to Eielson AFB AK.  The exercise has been renamed Red Flag Alaska.  It’s airspace is 67000 sq miles as opposed to Nellis with 12000. 

Cope Thunder was both my first and last advanced aerial combat training exercise.  (The terminology is from Sarge’s official source.  My definition is “closest thing to combat without real missiles”.)  In between, I participated in a bunch of Red Flag and variations thereof (stories to follow). 

The other big difference in the exercises was airpace,  Nellis was big and for the most part over uninhabited desert.  Cope Thunder was not very big. 

Cope Thunder Airspace is essentially everything to the left of the black line
BTW that Heart Shaped object on the left side are the Spratley Islands 530 nm from Hong Kong, 180 nm from Clark

The measurement line on the map above is 95 miles long.  That’s forever in Rhode Island terms, but 10 minutes at combat speed in a loaded F-4.  It also was highly populated and thus restricted to subsonic.  Which the guys understand, but… the difference between high subsonic and transonic (where the supersonic shockwave starts to form and the sonic boom begins, but the aircraft isn’t technically supersonic) is only a few knots apart.  The technical difference between transonic and supersonic is lost to those on the ground for some reason.  

That restriction had the effect of further reducing the airspace.  Most missions were planned for a west to east attack axis going feet dry at Iba with a north west egress to the east of High Peak until feet wet.  Made the bad guys planning effort a bit easier. (They capped Iba and High Peak)

The other unrealistic airspace point was it was next to impossible to get into fuel problems.  In last week’s episode, I describe a low altitude high speed chase that terminated with a simulated kill just as Betty lets me know it’s time to go home.  Out of AB, steep climb to the high 40s, exit the airspace, turn south, enter initial, pitch out and land.  All without touching the throttle, except to pull it to idle in the flare.  Not realistic, even in a Korean Scenario.

I've heard that is not the case in Red Flag Alaska.  Fuel awareness is a big deal when you’re 500 nm from home.

So, Juvat, if it takes airspace the size of Alaska to conduct this exercise, why do we do this?

There’s a well-known phenomenon about aerial combat.  The most likely time for a pilot to be lost is the first 10 missions (the second most likely is the last 10, but "get-home-itis" is hard to train for). Both exercises attempt to train pilots as realistically as possible to get them the equivalent of those first 10 missions.  As such, the exercises were each about 2 weeks long. All three of the squadron’s I was in when I participated in the exercises deployed early in the week prior to the start. 

One of the coolest feelings I’ve experienced is to be the Mission leader of a hundred ship package at the end of the runway at Clark.  Takeoff time is fast approaching.  The last of the package is finishing arming and you can see that flight’s #4 salute the arming chief and pass a thumbs up to his element lead who passes it to #2 and just like the tumbling dominos the thumbs up races through the package and arrives at your wingman who passes it to you.  You’re a go!  Advance the throttles to get rolling, on to the runway and into burner.  Gear up, flaps up, out of burner.  #2 joins to tactical spread, #3 and 4 join to spread on the other side.  A wall of Eagles and we’ve only been airborne a couple of minutes.  Gotta love it!

But, how do you get to this point?  The Saturday prior to the Monday startex would begin with a mandatory aircrew meeting.  That would begin with the typical hoorah speech about great training, but…restriction this, airspace that, no supersonic, no lowfly, blah, blah, blah.  In one ear, out the other, no contact with brain matter in transit.  Cope Thunder found a way to get our attention. They showed us this video. The crowd was yucking it up at the start but got very quiet by the end. I apologize for the quality. The training is realistic and mistakes have real costs.

Ok, Boss, you got our attention.

Two other videos from Cope Thunder, taken about a year before I got to Kadena, some pretty cool cockpit stuff in both. The first has some pretty good HUD video of gun kills.   The second is taken from the back end of a 67TFS F-15D, and given the beeps and squeeks coming over the intercom, the pilot didn't give any breaks to the back seater.  As Buck would say, when you got nothin', roll film.

 Rest in Peace, Trout 21