Ignoring
West Coast'sdaft nonsense...
In the early 1980s, I was fortunate enough to have a week of DACT with the 527th TFTS at Alconbury. They were highly professional aggressors in their F-5Es, but the call of "Atoll...Atoll" became rather common until we devised other tactics.
Their debriefs were rather polite and we asked why. "Politics", they told us - "Some of our customers don't like to hear the truth!".
So we asked for honest, gloves off debriefs and learned a lot. They were also appalled to learn of the g restrictions which our F-4s had to use, to eke out fatigue life. Hence no guns jinks to try and defeat a guns kill, for example. "What's the point of your government sending you to Aggressor training if they make you fly with one arm tied behind your back?", was the comment - to which we could only but agree.
Compare those professionals to the back-slapping, high-fiving antics of many of the Incirlik mob and, sorry Westie, they were in a different league to those numb nuts who couldn't tell a Blackhawk from a Hind. Or the ANG F-16 colonel who begged the UK jets to stir up trouble in Iraq, "Or we don't get to drop a bomb before we go home....."
