The Soviet-built MiG-21 “Fishbed”—lightweight, speedy, nimble, hard-to-see, and well-armed—has long been the most feared Iron Curtain fighter plane. It flies not only for the U.S.S.R., but for some 20 other Soviet-armed countries around the globe. In response to the MiG threat, the United States has developed a three-pronged counter-strategy: (1) better fighter and interceptor planes, (2) deadlier armament, and (3) highly-sophisticated training for Free World pilots who have battled the MiG, or who may have to face it in the future.
The U. S. Navy’s “MiG-killing” Fighter Weapons School, called Top Gun, is located at the Miramar Naval Air Station, near San Diego, California. (The U. S. Air Force offers somewhat similar training for prospective fighter weapons training instructors at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.)
“You might say our philosophy is akin to the old Chinese proverb, ‘The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war,’” says Top Gun’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander James H. Riiliffson. “The flying here is the most challenging a Navy or Marine Corps officer will encounter in his entire career.”
Top Gun training places special emphasis on learning the tricks of Mach 1-plus aerial combat—whipsaw cornering at turns, six-G turns, corkscrew climbs, and passing so close to the enemy that you almost scrape the paint off his canopy. During thousands of hours of simulated dogfights over the tan deserts of the Southwest and the blue waters of the Pacific not a single mid-air or ground collision has occurred.
Only a few years ago it was believed that aerial combat had almost reached the ultimate. You locked in on your enemy, pushed the right buttons, and let electronic gadgets do the rest. But somehow this did not seem to work.
Now, it is electronics plus the eyeball-to-eyeball, rough-and-tumble combat typical of Eddie Rickenbacker and Baron von Richthofen days.
“What we’re really doing is teaching our pilots old-fashioned dogfighting with new-fashioned weapons,” says Commander Ruliffson. “And the most important computer in the aircraft is the 165-pound bundle of human flesh, blood, nerves, brain, and guts that pushes the buttons.”
Top Gun was made necessary by the Vietnam war. During the first five months of 1968, Navy pilots shot down nine MiGs while their enemy counterparts registered ten kills—a kill ratio acceptable only to North Vietnamese. A later study showed that 50 air-to-air missiles were fired against attacking MiGs without downing a single plane—again, unacceptable to the United States.
As a result, the Naval Air Systems Command (NavAirSysCom) appointed Captain Frank W. Ault to analyze aerial combat in Southeast Asia. The reason for poor showing against MiGs was obvious: swirling, low-altitude battles conducted visually in a gut-wrenching series of high-G maneuvers. Keeping radar antennae trained on a darting enemy plane at a low-level, close-in encounter was like tracking a buzzing fly in a dark room with a flashlight. The solution was also obvious: improved missile reliability and more highly skilled U. S. fighter tactics.
Before the Ault Report was even finished, NavAirSysCom recommended the formation of a graduate school to train a core of fighter crews for the fleet. The objective was to place at least one graduate in every Navy and Marine Corps squadron who would become highly competent in aerial combat maneuvering and weapons deployment, and then this man would pass on his new skills to the other squadron members. No more plain “button pushers” would fly U. S. Navy fighter aircraft.
VF-121, the Pacific Fleet replacement training squadron, was directed to establish a Navy Fighter Weapons School at NAS Miramar—soon to be named Top Gun—for the entire Navy F-4 community. First officer-in-charge was Lieutenant Commander Dan Pedersen, who assumed command in October 1968, and the first class was accepted in March 1969. Top Gun became a commissioned unit in July, 1972.
Today, 17 instructors are assigned to the Top Gun school. “We select the best pilots and radar intercept officers (RlOs) graduated from the Navy Fighter Weapons School and make instructors out of them,” says Commander Ruliffson. “A trainee is not really ready for graduation until he can ‘shoot down’ his instructor in simulated hand-to-hand dogfighting.”
“We never talk about defense here. We’re aggressively oriented, and we speak of the least desirable offensive position. The object is simply to down your enemy and not be downed yourself. In warfare, coming in second is like coming in last.”
The training is conducted in Top Gun’s sky-high classrooms, Northrop’s new 700 mile-an-hour F-5E fighters simulate the MiG-2is, and McDonnell Douglas’ A-4Es play the roles of the MiG-17s. Both types of planes—stripped down and camouflaged a mottled “yuk” brown-yellow or a water-and-sky blue-grey—are piloted by Navy pilots who have had Vietnam experience against Soviet-built planes. “Student” attackers are the best fleet pilots—picked by their squadron commanders—flying America’s fastest planes, F-14 Tomcats, F-4 Phantoms, and F-8 Crusaders.
During a typical exercise, Top Gun instructors wait over the Arizona desert as the F-4 and F-14 crews attempt to locate them with radar. Then close-in “hassling” begins with combinations of opponents ranging from one-on-one, two-on-one, two-on-two, four-on-two, and four-on-four. Various maneuvers and formations are tested to provide the toughest problems possible.
Toward the end of the course, trainees escort bombers on strike routes over the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island. Somewhere along the way. Top Gun instructors pounce on the formation, thus testing the trainees’ ability to kill the interceptors before the strike aircraft are shot down. The action involves an eight-on-eight situation, “a real World War I aerial circus,” says instructor Lieutenant Mike Garland.
The five-week curriculum includes 90 hours of formal classroom work and 30 training flights. (Each training flight is followed by an hour or more of debriefing.) Ground instruction consists of lectures, chalk-talks, slides and motion pictures of such subjects as conventional weapons, electronic warfare, aerial combat maneuvering, air-to-air gunnery, and intelligence briefings on enemy aircraft and fighter performance.
One of Top Gun’s most important training aids is a sophisticated device—part computer, part TV system—known as the air combat maneuvering range (ACMR) which has been operational since late 1973. Built by the Cubic Corporation, the ACMR system can cover a 40-mile range at attitudes of 5,000 to 50,000 feet and trains fighter pilots in dogfighting without firing a single round of ammunition or rocket. Every move that the trainees make in the air is monitored and flashed on a TV-like screen where it can be monitored and analyzed. In addition, the entire mission can be reviewed in “instant replay” when trainees return from simulated combat.
The ACMR system is composed of four major sub-systems:
► The airborne instrumentation sub-system (AIS), mounted in a pod resembling a Sidewinder missile and adaptable to any aircraft capable of carrying the Sidewinder, measures aircraft and weapon performance during a dogfight and transmits the information to Top Gun ground facilities.
► The tracking instrumentation sub-system (TlS), comprised of six remote, solar-powered ground units, computes multiple ranges of up to 16 aircraft simultaneously.
► The computation and control sub-system (CCS), located at the Marine Corps Training Center, Yuma, Arizona, controls the operation of the other ACMR sub-systems and performs complex mathematical computations with its Sigma-Five computers. It processes range, altitude, and acceleration data transmitted from aircraft; computes position, missile, and flight simulations; and determines “hits” and “misses” for each participating aircraft. This information is also relayed back to Miramar.
► The display and debriefing sub-system (DDS), located in three large vans at the Marine Corps Training Center, Yuma, and duplicated at Top Gun’s Miramar headquarters, provides interactive graphic displays used to monitor all important facets of a mission. The entire exercise is operated and controlled from these master sites.
In a small classroom-like area inside one of the DDS vans, three displays make up the control console. On the left is a status display screen where nondynamic information such as name and rank of the trainee, weapon used, type of aircraft, firing results, range status, and a summary of the operation is listed. In the center is a three-dimensional graphic screen and main system control panel. At a glance, the maneuvering aircraft are visually located in relationship to one another and the range between them is computed. “A little like watching three-dimensional computer-drawn motion pictures,” said one trainee. On the right is a display of statistical information such as air speed, angle of attack, G-load, distance between aircraft, closing velocity, and other related information.
When an aerial dogfight is in process, those gathered before the ACMR screens can hear the short wave “chatter” that goes on continually between the instructor pilots and student pilots aggressively trying to shoot the bogies down. A two-on-one situation, for example, might sound something like this: Ground controller: “Bogey ... 30 degrees at 18 miles . . .
Lead plane: Heading 340 degrees . . . 17 miles . . .
Wingman: Visual (meaning I see you); Contact 20 degrees right of nose . . .
Lead plane: On nose ... 6 miles . . . Wingman: On nose at 2½ . . .
Lead plane: Tally ho! (meaning I spot the enemy)
Wingman: Where is he?
Lead plane: Passing . . . in a left hand turn . . .
Wingman: Do you have a visual? Lead plane: Continue left turn and look a couple of thousand feet below the sun.
Wingman: Going hard left . . . got a visual . . .
Lead plane: Fox Two (simulated Sidewinder away)
Bogey: O.K. . . . good shot . . .
In such dogfights, both instructors and student pilots carry tape recorders that pick up all the chatter—even the grunts and groans produced by six-G pullouts—and a knee board on which they write their impressions as they speed back to Miramar. These two sources of information, plus the ACMR instant replay, allow the fullest discussion during debriefing. As Lieutenant Garland describes:
“The object of debriefing is not for the purpose of an ‘I shot you down’ ego trip—but the how and why. We try to be as objective as possible on what went right and what went wrong during a swirling dogfight that may have lasted only two or three minutes. And with three dogfights per flight, there’s plenty to discuss. How many times did the student fire? How many times did he miss? More important, why did he miss? What did the enemy do to make his shot useless? What percentage of his range time was he in firing position? What percent of the time was he vulnerable?”
Graduating its first class in April 1969, Top Gun began to be effective in the Vietnam war within a year as Lieutenant Jerry Beauler of VF-142 and his RIO, Lieutenant Steve Barkley, scored the first MiG kill by Navy Fighter Weapons School alumni in March 1970. By mid-1972, Top Gun had sent at least one of its more than 200 graduates back to every Pacific and Atlantic Fleet fighter squadron.
“We think of two air wars in Vietnam,” says Commander Ruliffson. “The first was BTG—before Top Gun; and the second was ATG—after Top Gun.” The record bears him out, and convincingly attests to the soundness of fighter weapons training. Where the Navy’s MiG kill ratio in 1965–1968 was about two-and-a-half to one, it jumped during 1972 to 12½-to-one.
By the end of 1975 over 425 pilots and RIOs, flying their own planes, had graduated from the Navy Fighter Weapons School. In addition, some 200 others have completed classroom instruction on the ground. Through superior training and planned aggressiveness, they have been responsible for an impressive upgrading in fighter proficiency of the Navy and Marine Corps air arms. Most are lieutenants, junior and senior grade, and one was even an ensign. But when they earn the right to wear the Top Gun patch on their uniforms, it means they’re the best fighter pilots in the world. From time to time fliers from West Germany, Israel, and other allied nations have also undergone Top Gun training.
One often-told story sums up the Top Gun program. As Top Gun crews rejoined the fleet and began to fly missions, their squadron mates questioned them closely about their experience. One pilot who had just bagged a MiG put it this way: “Just like fighting Top Gun instructors—except that the Nam pilots weren’t that good.”