For more than 50 years, the United States Navy, Air Force and Marines have painted some of their planes with paints that resemble those found on fighter jets from Russia, China and some Middle Eastern nations.
What started with the veteran F-5 Freedom Fighter/Tiger II, A-4 Skyhawk and T-38 Talon jets was being absorbed by newer generation planes, such as the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Viper and F/A -18 Hornet and Super Hornet, reaching modern F-35 stealth.
But after all, why paint the planes as if they belonged to the opponent? What is the idea behind this?
As said before, the story begins 50 years ago, in the late 60s and early 1970s, during the Vietnam War. In 1969, TOPGUN was created, a famous specialization academy for fighter pilots and radar operators in the US Navy.
At TOPGUN, the best pilots from each squadron underwent intense training to not only improve their own performance in aerial combat in the jungles of Southeast Asia, but also to share their knowledge with their squadron colleagues.
Soon after, the military took other measures to increase the realism of training, based on the combat experience of the aviators themselves. One of them was to apply paintings similar to those of Russian and Vietnamese planes to the academy's fighters and other units, the purpose of which was precisely to simulate the enemy in exercises.
Russian paintings were not limited to just camouflage tones and curves, they also included markings such as 'bort numbers' (numbers painted on the side of the front section of the fuselage) and Zvezda, the famous red star on the tail, and some inscriptions.
The idea was soon absorbed by the Air Force, which created its own specialization school shortly afterwards. While in the Navy the 'Russian fighters' were called Adversary, in the USAF they received the designation Aggressor. The latter ended up becoming the most popular to refer to fighters with Russian liveries.
More recently, some planes began to receive Chinese aircraft markings, reinforcing the growing threat that Beijing poses to the United States.
Painting vs. BVR Combat
Although the paintings are what attract the most attention, the US Navy, Air Force and Marines have their own squadrons dedicated to in-depth study of techniques, tactics and procedures of adversary nations to provide training to front-line pilots. In other words, the work is much broader than just painting the planes.
With the evolution of aircraft and their onboard systems, combat in the beyond visual range (BVR) arena has also developed. In the past, where visual identification of the enemy was often imperative, today things are very different.
But even if the pilots don't see each other's plane, the aggressor/adversary paintings still have a high degree of importance, as explained by the then commander of a wing at Nellis Air Force Base, Brigadier General Robert Novotny, in an interview with the portal The War Zone.
“In the book Red Eagles: America's Secret MiGs, Steve Davies coined the phrase “Buck Fever”. He described Buck Fever as the thrill a new hunter feels the first time he points a rifle at a deer. Red Eagle pilots extended this concept to air-to-air combat.
Maj Francis “Paco” Geisler stated: “The first time I saw a MiG-17, I just stopped flying the plane.” The Red Eagles believed that exposing pilots to real MiGs in training was the only way to avoid Buck Fever in combat. Although the 64th Aggressors are not flying actual MiG aircraft, we use adversarial paint schemes to help mitigate the risk of Buck Fever. Based on this threat-representative training, our fighters are much more likely to arrive at a merge, visually identify the enemy and KILL!
I know that when I come across an Aggressor wearing this paint scheme, it will get my attention!”
In June 2022 the United States presented their first F-35 aggressor, proving that opposing jets are still very valuable. The F-35 also received a special paint job, although not as “colorful” as those seen on other models.
More Photos of the J-20 representing F-35 aggressor aircraft pic.twitter.com/cNl89IruA8
- Fighterman_FFRC (@Fighterman_FFRC) June 10, 2022
Conspiracies? Sometimes they appear.
Time and again, it is common to see cases of conspiracy theories involving these aircraft on social media. Some claim that the United States is trying to copy Russian planes, others suggest false flag attacks (as a case that occurred in 2016), where the Americans would use the jets to try to blame the Russians for an attack perpetrated by them.
The freedom offered by social media allows stories like this to emerge and attract attention, but the reality is very different from this, as explained above.
The big flaw with these and other theories is that even with similar paintings, the design of the planes is completely different, especially when we talk about fighters like F-16 and F/A-18 (the main aggressor jets in activity in the USA) compared to Russian aircraft such as the Su-27, Su-30 and Su-35. Therefore, it is very easy to identify and differentiate the models.
A business model
Combat pilot training began as an activity within the armed forces, involving entire squadrons with logistical from air bases. In operations like Red Flag, the exercise still includes foreign pilots annually.
But from a few years ago, a series of private companies also started to offer this service, which in business circles adopted the name Red Air.
These are firms that acquire used fighter planes and hire former combat pilots to play the same adversary role, but under contract with the Pentagon. Normally the Navy and Air Force contract flight hours from these companies, without having to bear maintenance and labor contract costs as is the case in their own structure.
Red Air companies with more resources already perform the service with supersonic fighters, including investing in updating aircraft to replicate more modern threats, even on older platforms. This is the case of Tactical Air , which modernized its fleet of F-5 fighters for these activities. In 2021, Canadian Top Aces became the first private entity to use F-16 fighters as aggressor aircraft.
