The maneuver is set as a hot air ballet on 280 knots and 20,000 feet over the Nevada desert.
An American Mariniers F-35B Lightning Warplane slips his tank party from a mouthpiece dragged through a tanker of the Royal Air Force and slips away, which forms two more American aircraft, while an Australian electronic warfare takes its place.
While the Royal Australian Air Force Growler sniffs 5000 pounds of fuel, the three F-35s rise in the sky, climb high above the tank before they accelerate benches and accelerate in the sun.
They are full of the latest fighting technology, so secret that DailyMail.com is later told that it cannot publish photos of the American jets.
Welcome to exercising Red Flag, an annual simulation in which us, British and Australian pilots fight together.
It has been implemented for decades and adapting and evolving to represent changing global dangers. Nowadays, the fashion word 'pacing threats' – points that the US can hit of its perch, but that do not pose an immediate military threat.
Think of China or Russia.
And if that was not clear enough hint about the identity of the enemy, Operation Bamboo Eagle will follow and the action will be moving over the eastern Pacific. It adds what planners call the 'tyranny of distance', simulating the difficulty to fight far from home.
Two Australian and one American E-18 Growler Electronic Warface planes in the air over Nevada. They fly from the wing of a Raf Voyager tanker while they are preparing to refuel
A Raf Typhoon Eurofighter completes its maneuvers and locks a tank hose. It is all part of Operation Red Flag, an advanced two weeks before the US and its allies
Red flag commander Colonel Eric Winterbottom: 'We win future conflicts as a coalition'
'For much of my career, Red Flag was aimed at a desert theater. Now we are switching to a pacing threat, “said Colonel Eric Winterbottom, commander of the 414th Combat Training Squadron that represents the 'enemy'.
'We present very high-end options that are ours, giving our people the opportunity to integrate to defeat those threats.
Where it would once be aimed at training to follow an uprising in Afghanistan or Iraq, it is all about which strategists call 'Great Power Competition'. Instead of Taliban -Schutters in caves, you propose your huge Chinese aircraft carriers or their latest fighter jets.
Red Flag has been working since 1975, born from a realization that pilots were simply not ready when they went for Vietnam's air. Sometimes the most powerful Air Force in the world lost more aircraft than the North Vietnamese.
The result was an exercise that was designed to be more realistic than ever before.
Winterbottom's Crack US pilots mainly fly F-16s. Their task is to represent the red forces.
Against them, the British, Aussies and Americans of the Blue Forces are the task of first pushing the red air force back and eliminating the air space for the next phase.
“They also have to reduce the enemy surface to air rockets through our oppression of the role of enemy air defense,” he said.
Raf -Typhones set up on Nellis Air Force Base ready for the fighting for us
Red flag has been held annually since 1975. The US Air Force suffered heavy losses during the war in Vietnam and senior officers that air crews needed more realistic combat training
Enemy red forces include F-16 Falcons of the aggressor Squadron, with headquarters at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and consist of very experienced pilots
Fl. Lt. Calum Falconer is one of the Raf Typhoon pilots flying in the exercise
“And then we will let strikers go in, and those strikers will either bombard in advance planned goals, together with dynamic goals, which present a moving target in our scenario, usually that goes somewhere and then stops.”
That all happens over hundreds and one hundred kilometers. That is where the Raf Voyager and his tons of air fuel come in.
The benches left and left and left while it stays in position outside the combat space, far from the hostile red troops, but close enough for more than 120,000 lb of fuel to keep the blue hunters in battle.
The Voyager is based on the Airbus A330, but has a different set of wings for extra fuel tanks and the tank system.
It can stay in the air until 12 o'clock if you have to.
Fl. Lt Jason Alty, the captain of the plane, is waiting for a few RAF typhoses to render.
“Once refueling is completed, they can stay in the fight until the end,” he said.
Behind him, a colleague looks at a bank with monitors that he uses to lead to the thirsty war aircraft.
From left to right: Capt. Stewart Seeney of the Royal Australian Air Force, Colonel Eric Winterbottom of the United States Air Force and GP. Capt. Guy Lefroy of the Royal Air Force
The RAF -Contingent includes a Voyager tanker, from where passengers can look at refueling in the air of snakes used from both wings
FLT. Lt. Jason Alty in the operating elements of the RAF Voyager Tanker at 20,000 ft over Nevada
It is the task of Master Aircrew John Clifford to guide in 'Receivers', the jets waiting for refueling, to the snakes that have every wing of the Voyager used
On board the Voyager, which is based on an Airbus A330 passengerjet
Rather, fl. Lt. Calum Falconer, a Typhoon pilot, described some of the differences he found from a smaller air force and working with Americans.
“We brought the attitude to the table of having one tool that fits with many locks,” he said. 'And they have their way of looking at things, which is much more tailor -made.
“They can use more specialized options for more specialized notes to crack.”
The Voyager is an example. It is equipped on the inside as if it is still a passenger beam, so it can work in a dual role as a troop transport and fuel tanker.
Two typhoons come in sight behind the left wing in the last tanking dance of the day.
Then it is the home base of Nellis Air Force Base just outside Las Vegas for a debrief.
For Winterbottom, the key is to ensure that the different forces can work together in a world where one day hundreds of F-35s can be stationed in Europe, but where only a few dozen are managed by the USAF
“Multinational integration is the key,” he said. “We win future conflicts as a coalition.”
