More than 60 aircraft and 2,600 personnel from the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea participated in the two-week Red Flag-Alaska air combat exercise. RF-A 13-3, the latest iteration of the Pacific Air Forces-sponsored training event, concluded on Aug, 23. Participating aircraft included A-10s, C-17s, C-130s, E-3 AWACS, F-22s, KC-135s, Navy F/A-18s, Japanese F-15s, and South Korean F-15Ks. They operated from Eielson Air Force Base and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, utilizing the airspace of the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex for their mock aerial dogfights. Civil Air Patrol aircraft also took part, simulating hostile, low-flying special operations platforms. Red Flag is meant to challenge pilots and aircrews by placing them in the types of stressing scenarios they might face in their first 10 combat sorties of a conflict. (Includes Eielson report by SrA. Shawn Nickel, Eielson report by SrA. Zachary Perras, and Anchorage’s KTUU TV news station report.)
The Air Force’s nascent KC-Z program, aimed at developing a next-generation family of systems for aerial refueling, will look to launch its analysis-of-alternatives study in 2024, years earlier than originally planned. Originally, the analysis of alternatives for KC-Z was set for “maybe in the 2030s,” Paul Waugh, program executive officer…