Any of the Adversary squadrons have the upgraded F-5 cockpits yet?
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F-5 upgrades
- Thread starter AircraftGeek513
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AircraftGeek513
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If I had a dollar for every time that line has been used online, I would be richer than Elon Musk.
Not today China..... now you have two dollars
AircraftGeek513
Member
Marines have one squadron in Yuma with another one standing up in Beaufort. Bought a bunch of used (but fairly low flight hour) F-5s from the Swiss Air Force. Giving them a glass cockpit with research being done to put on IRST on them. Some of the contractor F-5s have it so it's probably mostly a matter of funding.
Having flown with the F-5s at Fallon a lot, I'd rather have an F-16 for Red Air.
-111 is still flying them too (as well as VMFT-401 and whatever the brand new Beaufort reserve adversary outfit is being called), but I believe F/A-18's are on the road map ahead.
Agreed about your preference for something better than a flying piece of metal (i.e. F-16)
We fragged VMFT-401 about once a year to do FW DM when I was in SD...it was fucking stupid in retrospect. Those dudes didn't care though, they were professional and took whatever briefing card a young WTI sent to them with enthusiasm, bc it was flight time.
F-5s are awesome for letting MV-22 crews believe they can really one-circle their way out of a fighter's WEZ, as opposed to the reality where almost anything 4th-gen and later will just go into the vertical and dunk on them. Like what happened when one of the Oki squadrons (for whatever reason) got F-15s out of Kadena to do ACM with them.
Yeah they did the majority of our red air in our fighter weps phase when I was at VMFAT-101. Always seemed like cool guys.
On the subject, I did once do "BFM" with a Guard Herk in the Reno MOA. It was beyond bizarre, but it was kinda fun to watch their break turn. Then I shot them like 12 times.
The DACT card I’ve always been handed from skids/53s was always actually kinda fun to fly, but definitely not a realistic employment. Also kinda dangerous because they just wanted you to rage in a “2 circle” fight at 300 AGL which keeping a tally and that turn was always a little sketchy and usually we bumped it up a little.
FIFY. The tactic works if the bandit is dumb enough to come down and turn. Usually the aircrew would go blind us you went up through 8k though. I rather have some tactic than no tactic if I was a rotor guy though.
2 x A10s v 1 x Growler out of Osan Ina MOA on the NE side of the peninsula. Most fun I've ever had in an aircraft. It was nice not being the baby seal for once.
But they're fighter pilots.
