Watching the old movie “Top Gun” which was based on a school for teaching advanced tactics to fighter pilots and I wondered, wouldnt the Russians back then also had a version of “Top Gun” where they were training their pilots to fight Americans?
Today, wouldnt most countries like the UK, China, Japan, Russia etc… also have such schools?
There was a Soviet version, their own aggressor squadron, in the 1970s.Don’t know if Russia still does something like that. China also has aggressor squadrons. But I don’t know if the training in there can be described as being akin to a Top Gun or USAF Weapons School program.
The main difficulty for nations like Russia, China, and others, up to until recently, has been the lack of fighters with which to simulate American warplanes such as the F-22 and F-35. Because the US Air Force and Navy have warplanes with which they can simulate Russian Flankers and the like, but the Russians and Chinese didn’t have modern stealth warplanes to return the training favor.
But that would have only become a problem in the last decade or so. The Russian’s had MiG-29s back in the 1980s, which were comparable to the F-16 and F-15s we were flying. So the lack of superior aircraft would not have been an issue back then, which is the time period the OP is asking about. With that said, I have no idea what kind of schools or training facilities the Russian Air Force has at the time. I could only assume they’d have something similar.
I’m not sure if the Miramar base in reality is the same as in the movie, but in the movie the TG school is specifically to teach dogfighting skills. Not sure how relevant dogfighting is these days with modern armaments. I’m not sure modern aircraft need to get close enough to shoot the bird at each other.
Dogfighting can come into play if it’s an “intercept-unidentified-bogey” mission that turns hot without warning. The intercepting fighter has to first get up real close to the hostile jet in order to give the verbal warnings.
If you ask me, the Americans needed such a program more than the Soviets. In the Vietnam war the Phantom had every advantage over the Mig-21 --except in dogfighting. With the new generation of twin tails that came after the Phantom, it was important that this skill be nurtured and retained.
That’s exactly the thinking that led to poor air combat performance during the early part of the Vietnam war - which in turn led to the establishment of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program.
Ok, another question - why was it just the Navy and not the Air Force?
Yeah that was part of the movie script.
Do “friendly” countries like say the UK or France have such schools?
Do other countries send their pilots to Top Gun?
The real “Top Gun” / Fighter Weapons School / Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program isn’t some kind of “best of the best” training for fighter pilots, but rather a program to develop instructors- a train-the-trainer sort of thing, where the graduates of TOPGUN go back to their squadrons and impart what they learned to the rank and file pilots.
I think that’s being confused with the USAF’s Red Flag exercises where they rotate “blue” forces from the USAF, USN, USMC and allied forces through to fight mock battles vs. dedicated aggressor squadrons at Nellis AFB in Nevada, and Eielson AFB in Alaska. It’s sort of like the Air Force equivalent of the OPFOR at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA.
Not sure what your point is. Regardless of what was or was not in the movie, the school really was established to convey the skills that would allow fighter pilots to prevail in ACM engagements, including dogfighting. 50 years have come and gone, but what do you think is different about ACM engagements today compared to then?
Do you think they should have left the cannons out of the design on the F-35, F-22, and Superhornet?
Note that the Navy’s response to F-4 losses in vietnam was to improve missile maintenance and improve training with missiles (setting up Top Gun was a part of this). They went from a 2:1 kill/loss ratio to a 13:1.
The USAF responded to the same issue by adding a gun to the F-4, and saw little improvement. It actually got worse for a period.
I haven’t seen the new movie, but I remember reading a few years ago that they were having trouble coming up with a sequel because the premise of the original Top Gun movie was more or less irrelevant to modern day air warfare.
The air combat incident at the end of the original Top Gun was based on the 1981 Gulf of Sidra incident in which Navy F-14s intercepted and ended up shooting down two Libyan Su-22s who had gotten too close to a US carrier group and then engaged the F14s. Incidents like this were fairly common back in the 1980s.
If, by “improve training with missiles” you mean “teach pilots how to maneuver their aircraft into a good position for firing a missile,” then yes, I agree with you. According to the article you linked to, in Vietnam US fighter pilots were facing more maneuverable opponents and they were required to visually ID their target aircraft before being allowed to shoot it with anything. If you’re close enough for a visual ID, then you are likely to end up in a furball, and you better know how to maneuver your way out of it, and into a position where you can fire a missile. In other words, ACM training is what you’re talking about.
Having a gun, in and of itself, does nothing; you also need to know how to get it pointed at the bad guy. I haven’t seen any indication that the USAF offered any sort of ACM training on par with what the Navy did.
The gun isn’t the only tool that matters in a dogfight, of course. Air-to-air missiles are lovely, but they have the same engagement requirement: you better know how get behind the enemy aircraft and stay there until you get tone.
A little bit of an aside, but it’s a fairly open secret that the US operated a number of Soviet aircraft that it had acquired by various means. Did the Soviets do the same with US/Western aircraft? I wouldn’t be surprised if they managed to get their hands on an F-16 or a Mirage, those have been sold to everybody.
We supplied F-14s to Iran, among other things, before the Islamic Revolution when they were our allies. I’m sure that if the Soviets wanted to buy or borrow one, they would have been happy to oblige.