Salute!
The Red and Green Flag exercises are the largest bunch of planes in the air at one time since Desert Storm, and they "scaled" to get some semblance of reality. In truth, the mass gaggles we flew in Linebacker II in 1972 had about the same number of airframes as what I saw in 1984. The adversary A2A threat in 'nam was not the biggie, and I can guess that PVNAF(?) only put up two dozen Migs on any of our day's strike package. Hell, they knew our times and routes from years of experience, and we could only throw in a few wrinkles. We still lost more planes than we should have, but we learned.
What Red Flag does, and did when I was there, is give a huge advatage to the RED by their ability to re-generate in mid-air, not have their bases attacked by cruise missiles or B-2's, no attacks on their supply lines, etc. that could limit their later days. Just think about that? Maybe the "flag" scenarios today use first day results for the next day, but I haven't heard about that. Up to me, I would have a 5 or 6 day event and have cumulative losses and get the logistics folks, back shop folks, airlift folks, refueling folks, etc. more involved.
In DS, the other guys had trouble just getting their planes off the ground when the horses came outta the gates. So maybe on day one, hour one or so, we see this giant air battle with 200 hundred planes heading one way and maybe 120 headed the other. One gaggle can see the other way out there, and the other cannot. Many missiles in the air, but few kills until they get closer. Could be a good theme for a techno-thriller, huh?
Good discussion fodder for another thread, huh, regardless of the F-35 whines?
Gums sends..