The U.S. Air Force is set to significantly cut back the number of F-16 Viper aggressor jets at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, including those flown by a squadron that stood up in a high profile manner just last year. This comes despite a surge in demand for “red air” adversary support training and test and evaluation activities and raises broader questions about the future of the service’s steadily aging F-16 fleet.
Lt. Gen. John Healy, who serves as both Chief of the Air Force Reserve within the Air Force’s top headquarters at the Pentagon and head of Air Force Reserve Command at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, provided an update on the aggressor force at Nellis on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) main annual conference last week. Nellis is currently home to three dedicated aggressor units, the active duty 64th and 65th Aggressor Squadrons and the Air Force Reserve’s 706th Aggressor Squadron. The 706th was formally activated last year, transitioning from its previous role as a non-flying unit managing reserve pilots assigned to the United States Air Force Warfare Center (USAFWC), as you can read more about here. The 64th and 706th also fly F-16 variants, while the 65th has F-35A Joint Strike Fighters.
“So, our F-16 aggressors at Nellis… the program record currently has them divesting 26. So there’s no change to that right now,” Lt. Gen. Healy told The War Zone and others at a media roundtable on September 17. “So. as we’re currently moving forward, the expectation is that we will divest the pre-Block F-16 aggressors, and we have new mission sets at Nellis that we will be able to do and should be able to utilize that manpower to build as we continue to go forward.”
With regard to F-16s, “pre-Block” refers to Block 30/32 and older C/D variants. For years now, the Air Force been pushing to divest all of its pre-Block F-16s in order to rationalize its Viper fleet around Block 40/42 C/Ds and newer Block 50/52 “post-Block” versions.
“We’ll try to utilize them [the pre-Block F-16s from Nellis] for our other remaining pre-Block F-16 unit down in Homestead,” which will involve working “to find out what’s the best of the bunch to keep our most viable jets for [the] long term, Healy added last week. Homestead Air Reserve base in Florida is currently home to the 482nd Fighter Wing and its 93rd Fighter Squadron.
It is unclear whether or not all of the 26 pre-Block F-16s that Lt. Gen. Healy said are now set to leave Nellis belong to the 706th Aggressor Squadron or if this includes ones assigned to the 64th Aggressor Squadron, as well. What this all might mean either way for the latter unit, including whether it might get additional newer jets to make up for the impending shortfall, is also not clear. The 64th has long operated a mix of Block 25 and 32 F-16s, but it has also received at least 11 post-Block versions in recent years, at least some of which are Block 40s. The Block 40s notably have different engines (General Electric F110-series) from the Block 25s and Block 32s (Pratt & Whitney F100-series), and different maintenance and logistics requirements, as a result.
There is already evidence that the aggressor changes at Nellis are set to impact more than just the reserve component. When the 706th started getting its first F-16s in September 2023, it was reported that the squadron was only set to get 18 Vipers in total. At least some of those jets appear to be Block 30s (also with General Electric F110-series engines) that came from the Air Force Reserve’s 457th Fighter Squadron at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in Texas, which has been in the process of converting to the F-35A in the past year or so.
The War Zone has reached out for more information about exactly what the Air Force’s organic aggressor force at Nellis is expected to look like going forward and what broader implications this might have.
As already noted, the plans to cut 26 F-16s from Nellis’ aggressor community raises immediate questions about the Air Force’s ability to provide organic red air support. Earlier this year, the active-duty 18th Aggressor Squadron at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska also notably transitioned to a unique air defense unit, the 18th Fighter Interceptor Squadron, which you can read more about here.
“Alaska based forces will continue to support Air Force and Joint exercises in Alaska, including Red Flag-Alaska,” a spokesperson for the 354th Fighter Wing at Eielson told The War Zone in April when asked about how the change in the 18th’s primary mission might lead to an aggressor capacity gap and what steps might be taken to mitigate that.
U.S. military demand for aerial aggressors has already grown in scope and scale in recent years. The Air Force is now pushing to further expand its slate of large force air combat exercises as part of an ongoing shift in focus to preparing for potential high-end conflicts, especially one in the Pacific against China. There has also been an explosion in demand for aggressor support for test and evaluation activity activities in recent years, particularly as the Air Force has been pushing ahead with its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative and other modernization efforts.
The Air Force, as well as the U.S. Navy, have and continue to make heavy use of contractor red air services to help bolster aggressor capacity. There has also been a clear desire in recent years to bolster the services’ abilities to provide these capabilities organically, especially as privately-operated pre-fourth-generation aggressors become increasingly obsolete. There is a growing need for fourth and fifth-generation fighters to better replicate more advanced threats. With all this in mind, it is worth noting that in 2022, the Air Force abruptly decided not to renew a long-standing contract with private firm Draken to provide adversary air services at Nellis, specifically.
The U.S. military has also been working to acquire of more capable semi-expendable and stealthy target drones to help expand capacity to replicate advanced crewed and uncrewed aerial threats during training and testing. For the Air Force, new advanced target drones are seen as critical given the dwindling supply of older F-16s to convert into QF-16 drones. More capable uncrewed aggressors, possibly derived from future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) designs, could be part of the aggressor equation in the future, too. However, current domestic U.S. airspace restrictions mean that uncrewed platforms of any type are not really usable in large force exercises that extend beyond the boundaries of tightly controlled ranges.
Speaking at the roundtable at the AFA conference last week, Lt. Gen. Healy alluded to larger aggressor capacity concerns.
“We put them there [the pre-Block F-16s for the 706th] with the hopes of expanding and continuing further,” Healy said. “That hasn’t come to pass.”
As the Air Force’s fighter, F-16s continue to be in high demand to support training and test and evaluation requirements, as well as for operational deployments. As of Fiscal Year 2023, the service had 841 F-16s of all types, with the number expected to drop to 830 by the close of this fiscal cycle, which ends next Monday. Around 608 of the remaining jets are set to receive a slate of significant upgrades, including new active electronically-scanned array (AESA) radars and improved electronic warfare suites, as you can learn more about here.
Even so, questions have been emerging already about the sustainability of Air Force F-16s, even post-Block types that are also getting ever older. These challenges have only become more pronounced as the Air Force has steadily walked back its expectation that the F-35, a program staring down ballooning sustainment costs and other issues, will completely supplant the Viper any time soon. In March, the Air Force also warned that hundreds of aircraft, including Vipers and other types, could end up grounded without an additional $1.5 billion for spare parts on top of its formal budget request for the 2025 Fiscal Year.
The possibility of the Air Force buying new production Block 70/72 F-16C/Ds to bolster its tactical aviation fleets in the near term has come in the past.
“I am not tracking [that]. I don’t have any information for you [on] that. There could be and I just don’t know, or [there] may not be,” Maj. Gen. Bryony Terrell, Special Assistant to the Director of the Air National Guard, said in response to a question from The War Zone at a separate roundtable on the sidelines of the AFA conference last week about whether there were any plans to even look into buying new-build Block 70/72 Vipers.
The Air Force has also expressed interest in utilizing the T-7A Red Hawk trainers that it is in the process of acquiring in the aggressor role. The idea of a light fighter based on the T-7 has also been put forward. Unfortunately, the T-7 continues to be beset by delays, with the first of these jet trainers now not expected to enter service until 2028.
Uncertainty around the Air Force’s plans to acquire a new crewed sixth-generation stealth combat jet, primarily as a replacement for the much more advanced by also aging F-22 Raptor fleet, has prompted renewed discussions about purchasing an alternative ‘light’ stealth fighter of some kind, as well. The service is now regularly warning about at best flat budgets in the coming years that could upend modernization efforts across the board.
In the meantime, increasingly complex global threats from great power competitors China and, to a lesser degree, Russia only look set to grow. This has driven demand for higher-end aggressor support and, in turn, contributed to the major push for more organic red air adversary capacity, especially after the end of the Draken contract at Nellis. Now, despite the continued demand, the Air Force’s aggressor forces look to be contracting again without a clear plan to make up for the resulting gap. No matter how the Air Force’s force structure ultimately evolves, the existing Viper fleet, even with substantial upgrades, will never be able to last forever, either.
The plans to significantly shrink the number of dedicated aggressor F-16s at Nellis, together with other questions about the future of the Air Force’s aging F-16 fleet, could be signs now of trouble on the horizon for the Air Force’s aging F-16 fleet as a whole.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com