Major Shaitan Singh
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Lt. Col. Fred "Spanky" Clifton is one of the most experienced aggressor pilots ever, having flown the F-15, F-5, F-16 and the notorious MiG-29. He's been in dogfights with pretty much every fighter out there and is a graduate of the prestigious Fighter Weapons School. Now he's here to share his expertise with you.
How in the hell did you end up becoming the first USAF fighter pilot to fly the Russian-built MiG-29 Fulcrum as an exchange pilot?
First – a little (actually, a lot of) background. I earned a degree in aerospace engineering in 1979 and worked for Boeing in the Seattle area for two years after graduating from college. I had no real interest in joining the military at the time since I was an Army brat, growing up mostly at Fort Bliss, TX, and probably felt I had done my time. Plus, my dad told me if I ever joined the Army he'd kick my butt. Trust me Dad, an Army career was never on my radar screen. The Army doesn't have cool jets!
I had a life-long fascination with airplanes and had built hundreds of plastic models, eventually moving on to u-control models and then radio-controlled models. I had always wanted to learn to fly myself, but could never afford it. One of my coworkers at Boeing told me about the Boeing Employees Flying Association (BEFA). BEFA had a range of different airplanes at affordable prices to members. For example, a Cessna 152 rented for $19 / hour, including fuel. An instructor was another $10 / hour. I joined BEFA and got my private pilot's license in 1981. The ink wasn't wet on my certificate when I took my girlfriend for a flight. I moved up to the Cessna 172 and thought this was the cat's meow. Flying bug smashers was fun, but it sure wasn't exciting. One Spring Saturday in 1981 another coworker called and asked if I wanted to go to the open house at McChord AFB. It was an abnormally sunny day in the Pacific Northwest, so away we went. Parked next to each other on the flightline was an F-15 and F-16. I was drawn to them like flies to a cow patty and I'm sure the two pilots were happy to have me quit bending their ears with questions. After a great show by the Canadian Snow Birds, I went and stood about 100 feet in front of the two fighters and thought to myself that I could fly one of those.
The next week, I called the local recruiting office and talked to the USAF recruiter. We set up a meeting and upon entering the building the Navy recruiter told me that if the Air Force wouldn't take me, the Navy would. The Air Force recruiter must have had some issues with my appearance. I had shoulder-length hair and a way out-of-regs mustache. His first comment was that I had to have a college degree to become an Air Force pilot. Got one of those. First square checked off. He next commented that I can't be doing (or never had done) drugs. Hadn't gone there. Second square checked off, and the ball started rolling. Remember, this was 1981 and the start of the Reagan military build-up. If you met certain minimal criteria, and could fog a mirror, you were in. A couple of months after starting the application process, completing the testing requirements and passing a flight physical, I was awarded a slot in USAF Officer Training School (OTS) with guaranteed pilot training as a follow-on; assuming successful completion of OTS.
Driving from Seattle to San Antonio, TX (OTS was at the Medina Annex of Lackland AFB in those days) the route took me past Hill AFB in Utah. As a drove by I saw a couple of F-16s in the traffic pattern. If you've ever been to the Salt Lake City area, you know how nice it is. Let's see – F-16s, mountains (skiing, hiking, etc). It must be a sign from God. I made up my mind right there I wanted to fly F-16s.
I never got stationed at Hill.
After finishing OTS, I started UPT at Laughlin AFB, TX in March 1982. There were 72 students who started the class (Reagan build-up once again). If I had any apprehensions about flight training, the biggest was aerobatics. Up until that time, I had never been a big fan of things like roller coasters and such and was afraid I'd get sick doing 'acro.' We started doing some mild acro on the second or third flight in theT-37 and I took to it like a fish takes to water.
The next thing I was apprehensive about was instrument flying. I'd never done that. There are four things one needs to do simultaneously to fly instruments – hold heading, hold altitude, hold airspeed and talk on the radio. In the first couple of T-37 instrument simulator sorties, I could do three, but not all four. During the second sim sortie, this hot-tempered first lieutenant instructor was banging on the glare shield and yelling at me over my errors. I'm not one to swear a whole lot, but I finally looked over at him and told him that if he'd STFU I'd do better. He did shut up and the sim went much better. He and I got along great after that and we ended up flying a lot together. I didn't bust any flights or sims in the T-37.
The success continued into the T-38; although, I did bust one T-38 flight because I was slow getting the landing gear up as the flight lead during a formation take-off. As assignment time approached, I had been ranked as "fighter qualified" and filled out my assignment preference sheet (aka, Dream Sheet) with F-16 at the top and F-15 was number two.
Every UPT class does its Assignment Night a little bit differently. We knew beforehand what aircraft would be in the assignment drop for my class. As far as fighters, there would be one F-16, two F-15s, one F-4 and three A-10s. We decided that on Assignment Night, each student would be called up and face the crowd with a projector screen to his or her back. The first picture projected on the screen was the student's first-choice aircraft, the second picture was what the class voted that the student would get and the final would be a picture of the USAF's (final) choice for you. As the students went up, one after the other, it was easy to narrow down the remaining available aircraft from the deck. Kind of like counting cards. It got down to the last two students, me and another, and the two last available jets were an F-15 and an F-16. I was called up first. As I stood in front of the crowd – first picture: F-16, second picture: F-16, third picture: F-15.
My reaction? Are you effing kidding me? I had to gather myself quickly. This was actually a great deal and honor. 13 of my classmates had been selected for one of the ultimate USAF screw jobs, First-Assignment Instructor Pilot, and were staying at Laughlin to instruct in T-37s and T-38s. I'd better put on a happy face. I saluted the student squadron commander and pumped my fists on the way back to my seat. Since I didn't get my number-one choice, the F-15 was going to have to 'sell' itself to me, but I decided to go into it with an open mind. Of the 72 students who started, about 38 graduated. Even during the Reagan build-up, there were standards. The last student was washed out the day we received our wings.
I started F-15A training at Luke AFB, AZ in July 1983 and was assigned to the 7thTactical Fighter Squadron at Holloman AFB, NM in October 1983. In February 1987 I was assigned to the 65th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis AFB. About a year and a half into the Aggressor assignment, the decision was made to convert from the F-5E to another airplane; which was, ultimately, the F-16.
There was a lot of indecisiveness at the USAF level as to which Aggressor pilots would convert to the F-16. At first, the Air Force wasn't going to send a lot of former F-15 guys like me to F-16 training. So here was a large group if F-5 instructors with no place to go; or, at least, we thought. Uncle Sugar had a lot of F-5 instructor pilot (IP) jobs in exotic locations and he lined us former Eagle pilots against the wall and started throwing darts at us. I got an assignment to Sidi Ahmed Air Base in Bizerte, Tunisia. I went on record as having volunteered for the job if I could come back to the Aggressors and convert to the F-16 (Remember? My number-one choice). The deal was done and after a year in a land of strange new sights and smells, I got an assignment to the PACAF Aggressors who were in the process of moving from Clark Air Base in The Philippines to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa and taking delivery of brand new Block 30 F-16C Vipers.
Unfortunately, en route to Mac Dill AFB, FL to get checked out in the F-16 the powers-that-be decided to close all the USAF Aggressor squadrons. Suddenly, I become that guy with Eagle stink on him that the Air Force didn't want to send to a Viper if it didn't have to. This was especially true at the captain level. Those streams were just not to be crossed. There was a lot of back-and-forth at Tactical Air Command assignments and the USAF Personnel Center about what to do with me and the initial hack wasn't very good – Air Liaison Officer at Fort Irwin, CA. However, cooler heads prevailed and I was allowed to continue F-16 training and got an assignment to Misawa Air Base, Japan. That's how I got to the F-16. It took me over 7 years from the time a started UPT to the time I got my first Viper flight.
Arriving at Misawa, I fell into an age gap. There were a bunch of old-heads and a bunch of young punks, and with lots previous fighter experience, I upgraded to F-16 IP (instructor pilot) pretty quickly. Our squadron weapons and tactics officer, now a four-star, was a great guy and an outstanding example of what a squadron patch wearer (USAF Fighter Weapon's School graduate) should be. I still had time left before I got too senior, so he backed me to go the F-16 Fighter Weapons School (I was in the last "Fighter" Weapons School class – 92A).
Being a FWS graduate opens some doors not necessarily available to other fighter pilots. In 1995, while flying Vipers at Pope AFB, I was selected to be the first MiG-29 exchange pilot in Germany. A requirement for the job was to be a Weapons School graduate. After that assignment, it was back to the Viper at Cannon AFB, NM and then, ultimately, back to Nellis in 2001. I hung up the spurs in December 2004. That's the chronology in a nutshell.
When it comes to US fighters, you have flown some of the most notorious American fighters in modern history, including F-15, F-5, and F-16. Can you give us an idea of what the different characteristics of each jet are and their positives and negatives, especially in terms of air-to-air combat?
F-15A/B: The F-15 I flew was nowhere near the jet it evolved into. The Eagle is big, powerful and handles great. It's a lot like a Mercedes. The cockpit is large and roomy and the outward visibility, except for the canopy bow, is slightly better the Viper's. Control response is crisp and sometimes twitchy, especially in pitch. The F-15A is structurally 1500 pounds lighter than the F-15C. It also carries 2000 pounds less internal fuel than the F-15C. That meant lots of short sorties. It is a great BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers aka dogfighting) machine.
The jet accelerates well, but is not especially fast at low altitude. At lot is written about the F-15 being Mach 2.5 capable. First off, Mach 2.5 is altitude limited to above 50,000 feet and time limited to 1 minute maximum. I've flown the jet to Mach 2.35, its normal operating limit, on only a couple of occasions.
We occasionally did intercepts against SR-71s in which we got out to Mach 1.9 to Mach 2.1, but flying at those kinds of speeds were rare. Before anyone thinks we were trying to chase down SR-71s, that was not the case. The intercepts were head-on in which we simulated launching AIM-7s using the SR-71 as a MiG-25 simulator.
Accelerating straight up? That's a myth. First off, the old coal-burning Pratt F100-100 proved troublesome. When the throttles were pushed into afterburner you weren't 100% sure if the flame would come out of the back end or the front end. Sometimes, it came out of both ends. I've flown a twin-engine glider, meaning that both engines, while still operating but producing no thrust, as they had stalled. I had maybe 30 hours in the jet at that point. While the Pratt F100-220 in the F-15C is more trouble free, it only produces about 23,500 pounds of thrust. Installed thrust-to-weight is slightly less than 1:1 with eight missiles and no external fuel. If you point the jet straight up and start climbing thrust starts to fall off as the air's density starts to decrease. Weight is not decreasing, as fuel is burned off faster than thrust is decreasing. So stop it everyone – there's no accelerating going straight up in the F-15.
Where the F-15A fell short, at least compared to what the jet became, is in the avionics department. The original APG-63 radar nowhere lived up to the hype and is worthy of a whole other discussion.
Bottom line – I was able to lay a solid air-to-air foundation in the F-15 and, in the end, the jet 'sold' itself to me. I loved flying it.
F-5E/F: Getting selected to the aggressors was a huge deal for me and what I wanted to do after my initial fighter assignment. In those days, it was rare for a young punk like me to get a second consecutive Eagle assignment unless one went to either Luke AFB or Tyndall AFB to be an F-15 IP. The aggressor pilot selection process was competitive, so I felt pretty good about the opportunity. We had no two-seat F-5s in the aggressors. I didn't fly the F-5F until I'd been flying the jet for over a year and a half. I hated the F-5F. It was a dog.
As complex as the Eagle is, the F-5E is the polar opposite. Simplicity is a whole quality unto itself. Most look at the F-5E and surmise it's a single-seat T-38. That's not the case. The F-5E's GE J85-21 engines have almost as much thrust in military power as the T-38's GE J85-5s have in full afterburner. The F-5E carries 900 pounds more fuel than the T-38, so it has slightly better legs. The F-5 also has semiautomatic or fully automatic, depending on vintage, leading and trailing edge maneuvering flaps and has leading edge extensions similar to the Viper. The Tiger II will fly rings around a T-38 and is faster at both low and high altitude.
Because the F-5 is so small it does present some issues with radar detection range and, if it survives to the merge, it's difficult to acquire visually. Finding the merge in the F-5 is also a challenge as its pulse radar is not very good and is difficult to use. You bank on the fact that everyone is flying a bigger jet. In a maneuvering fight, the F-5E can acquit itself well. While not enjoying the sustained turn rate of other fighters, its nose can be jacked around at slow speed to at least intimidate some young fighter pilot into making a mistake. The controls feel slightly heavier than those in the T-38 and rearward visibility is somewhat lacking, but workable. Over-the-nose visibility is also a challenge as the nose is fairly long and you sit fairly low in the cockpit. I came into a lot of merges inverted if I knew the adversaries were below me.
The F-5 was a great aggressor aircraft. It did a great job simulating the MiG-21, a passable job of simulating the MiG-23, but was unable to simulate the new MiG-29 Fulcrum and Su-27 Flanker. Its inability to simulate the new Soviet 4th-generation threats was one of the things that led to its demise in the USAF. It lacks as an operational fighter due to range limitations and it can't carry a lot. But it is a hoot to fly. I learned more about stick-and-rudder fighter piloting in the F-5 than I did in anything else. In the high horsepower jets, thrust can make up for a lot of mistakes. Not so with the F-5. It's a little jet with lots of bullets.
F-16C/D: The Viper is, in my opinion, what a fighter should be. It is small, nimble, accelerates like a bullet and is a pure joy to fly. Instead of loading it down with bombs, the radar should have been improved to give it Eagle-like capabilities and the jet should have taken more of an air-to-air role. While I said that the F-15 is like a Mercedes, The F-16 is like a Formula One race car. The cockpit is tight and it gives you more of the sensation that you're actually wearing the jet than actually sitting in it. The side-stick controller takes about as much time to get used to as it takes to read this sentence.
I've flown all the C/D versions – Blocks 25, 30, 32, 40, 42, 50, 52. The Pratt-powered Blocks 25, 32 and 42 are good performers, but not great. The GE-powered Blocks 30, 40 and 50, plus the Pratt-powered Block 52 are absolute beasts. The GE-powered fleet is flown by the active-duty F-16 squadrons while Air National Guard and Reserve squadrons operate a mixed bag of GE-powered and Pratt-powered Vipers. I've never flown a jet that will out accelerate the GE-powered F-16. At low altitude, GE Vipers will step out to its airspeed of 810 knots indicated airspeed like nobody's business. The limit is based on the polycarbonate canopy and not the engine. At higher speeds the canopy starts to get warm due to air friction. At some point the canopy will start to deform if the jet gets much faster. At high altitude, I've had the jet out to Mach 2.05. This limit is due to the fixed air inlet and opposed the F-15's variable geometry inlet.
In his book, Sierra Hotel: Flying Air Force Fighters in the Decade After Vietnam, Col C.R. Anderegg, USAF (ret), former F-15 pilot and F-4 Fighter Weapons School graduate, wrote this about the F-16: "The pure joy of the F-16, though, was in the furball (complex dogfight with many aircraft), where the aircraft had the edge over the F-15 and a significant edge over everything else. With the F-16's incredible agility and power, the pilot could get close and stay close. He was less a viper than a python gradually squeezing the fight closer while beating down his victim's energy and resistance until the time came for a mortal blow. Chaff might spoof a radar missile or flares might decoy a heat-seeker, but as one pilot said, 'The gun is stupid. You can't jam it and you can't fool it.' The F-16 was a superb gunfighter, and in the furball it was the top cat."
F-15 Eagle Vs F-16 Viper, which wins the day in an air-to-air engagement?
Starting from BVR, the F-15 enjoys a big advantage in radar detection range. Surprisingly, the Viper's radar has significantly higher peak power than the Eagle's radar. Because the F-15s radar can operate with a high pulse-repetition frequency versus the Viper, whose radar operates with a medium pulse-repetition frequency, the Eagle's radar is actually transmitting more radar energy down range resulting in greater detection range. Because of some of the limitations of the old APG-63 I flew with in the F-15A, the F-16C's APG-68 was actually a step up for me. The APG-68 had more modes and multi-targeting capability. Unfortunately, for the first couple of years I flew Vipers, we were AIM-9 only. AMRAAM didn't start to come into the equation until late 1991.
In an air-to-air configuration, the F-16 has a higher fuel fraction and lower specific fuel consumption than the F-15. An F-15C IP at the Fighter Weapons School, (then) Major Mike "Boa" Straight, wrote an article about this in the Fighter Weapons Review in 1988 or 1989. I'm not just making this up. On-station time, acceleration to intercept speed and range advantages go to the Viper.
WVR (within visual range) scenario: An F-15C and GE-powered F-16C merge head-on, no missiles, guns only. This is truly where the F-16 excels. The F-15 is absolutely no slouch in this arena and the margin for error is small, but he F-16 enjoys a sustained turn rate advantage and a thrust-to-weight advantage. My game plan would be not to slow down too much in the F-16. Where the F-16 starts to fall off in comparison is when it gets slow and butts up against its hard-wired angle-of-attack limiter. Slow is not a place to be in the F-16 unless absolutely necessary. I wanted to keep my airspeed up relative to the Eagle and beat him down to where his nose track starts to slow and use the vertical as required and the F-16's turn rate advantage to bring my nose to bear. Both jets bring excellent handling qualities and visibility to the equation. What you really don't want to be is the MiG pilot who faces off against either jet in this scenario.
What was it like being sent to Germany to fly with former enemies in a fighter that you trained so hard to kill for so many years?
As stated earlier, I got this assignment while I was flying F-16s at Pope AFB, NC. We officially activated the F-16 squadron in June 1993 and were declared operational six or so months later. Air Combat Command (ACC) brought in a fairly experienced group of guys to stand up the new squadron. The four flight commanders, of which I was one, were promoted to major in February 1994. I personally pinned on major on the 1st of March, 1994. We completed our first combat deployment in November 1994 and that set the whole scenario up.
At the time ACC (Air Combat Command) had a policy of only three field-grade (major through colonel) officers in a line fighter squadron. That meant the squadron commander, the operations officer and the assistant operations officer. We suddenly had too many field graders, but ACC let us slide until the combat deployment was completed. Then the handwriting was on the wall and I had to find a new assignment.
In the 1990s, assignments could be found and applied for on-line on the Personnel Center's website. We called these 'the want ads.' I had been unsuccessful until one of my squadron mates asked me if I had applied for the MiG-29 exchange assignment. I had missed that one. It was in the special duty assignments section. I checked out the want ad and called the point-of-contact (POC). All assignments had to be posted in the want ads, regardless if someone had already been penciled in for that job or not. Officially, it had to be a 'competitive' process. Sometimes, someone already had the job but it was listed just to be 'legal.' I asked the POC if this was the case. I figured someone's prize show dog at Nellis already had the assignment. It has to be in the want ads just to be legal.
The POC told me it was an open competition. "Put me down as a volunteer," was my reply. The job required that one be either an F-15C or F-16 Weapons School graduate, pass the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) and complete German language training at the Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, CA. As an Aggressor pilot I had been the MiG-29 / Su-27 subject matter expert. I really wanted this job. What a chance to see if what I had been teaching about the MiG-29 Fulcrum was actually correct.
The first thing to do was the DLAB. In El Paso, TX we had to take Spanish from the first through the seventh grade and I couldn't put together a complete sentence in Spanish; how was I supposed to pass the DLAB? For the DLAB I was set at a desk and issued a set of headphones. The test proctor inserted a cassette tape into a tape player and the tape started off with language rule 1. With language rule 1 in hand, the recording went into some made-up language that sounded like a mixture of Tagalog and Arabic. Based on language rule 1, and the made-up language, I had to translate different statements. After about five questions with only language rule 1, then came language rule 2. Oh by the way. Don't round file language rule 1. It's still a player. Now I had to translate more statements using both language rules. Then came language rules 3, 4 and 5, each at a time. Each new rule required translating statements while retaining the previously introduced rules. It was a hard test and there was no rewinding the tape to listen to something over again. I knew I had busted it and my name would be taken out of consideration for the MiG-29 assignment. Lo and behold, I actually passed the test. "When in doubt, 'C' it out" really worked. As a result, I was officially a player for the MiG-29 exchange assignment.
There was a report-no-later-than date for German language training at DLI for May 1995. About a month out, there had not yet been a release of who had actually gotten the MiG-29 job. Anyone who got the job would have to have time to prepare for the move, actually get to California and then find a house before the class started. The Air Force created a time crunch. There was a guy I had gone to OTS and UPT with working fighter assignments at the Personnel Center. He got one of the A-10 assignments out of UPT and we eventually ended up flying F-16s together at Misawa. I called him to see if he couldn't get any intel from the special duty assignments folks. He said he'd have to call me back. When he did he told me he couldn't tell me but he said if he got a chance to come to Germany he'd like for me to give him a ride in the MiG-29.
I got the official word a few days later when a USAF colonel in London – he was responsible for all exchange officers in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East – called to congratulate me on my selection. He explained that what put me over the top, and it was the Germans' call, was that I had flown both the Eagle and the Viper and had been an Aggressor pilot.
I showed up in Laage, Germany in January 1996. The first month I was there I was without my family and I did this so I could find a house before they showed up. Until my household goods arrived I stayed on base. Since there was nothing else to do, I used the time to study the MiG-29 Dash 1 (Flight Manual). The jet is exceedingly simple plus the electric and hydraulic systems are similar to the F-16. I got a few afternoons of systems academics, normal operations and emergency procedures. I went through about five simulator sorties emphasizing normal ops, emergency procedures and instrument flying. This culminated in an emergency procedures simulator evaluation.
Flight training was just like we do in the USAF when we transition someone to a new fighter. The first few flights were mainly aircraft handling, instrument flying and pattern work in a two-seater. The fourth or fifth flight was an instrument check which allowed to me solo the single-seater. I didn't give much special credence to my initial solo. I had soloed other jets before, so this was nothing new.
My family had since arrived in Germany and I didn't mention anything to my wife about my initial solo flight when I left for work that morning. However, after I stepped to go on my solo flight, one of the pilots went to pick up my family and bring them out to the base to watch the event. When I taxied up to the runway, I switched to tower's frequency and transmitted I was ready for take-off. The clearance came from my 9-year old daughter. That was cool. After landing I was met by the squadron pilots, my family, the wing leadership and numerous others. I received a plaque and we toasted with champagne to commemorate the event. The Germans do things up right.
Next, it was on to tactical training in the Fulcrum. When I showed up in Germany I had over 2500 fighter hours. It was decided that I would complete an abbreviated syllabus. I did the BFM phase (offensive, defensive, neutral) in one day. I did one intercept sortie and was done with my check-out.
The only avenue for Luftwaffe pilots into the MiG squadron was to be an F-4 flight lead. No new guys and no Tornado pilots. The conversion syllabus was designed for the new MiG-29 pilot to walk out the other end as a MiG-29 flight lead. After my last syllabus sortie I was asked if I wanted to lead a 4 MiG-29s versus 4 Danish F-16s sortie the next day. I explained that it had been a year since I'd flown a 4 v 4 anything and I was probably a little rusty. I qualified further I'd be more than happy to fly any other position in the flight, which I did. I just didn't lead – until the next 4 v 4.
Since I had already been a fighter IP in multiple jets, the chief of wing standardization and evaluation (and F-4F Fighter Weapons School graduate) decided that my IP upgrade would also be abbreviated. He explained that they weren't going to teach me how to be an instructor pilot so all I needed to do was take an instrument check ride in the backseat of the two-holer and safely land the jet from the backseat. I was a MiG-29 IP with less than 30 hours in the jet.
We did not employ the Fulcrum as the Warsaw Pact had intended. We employed it using western tactics. Mostly like the F-16 before it got AMRAAM. Although we had a BVR missile, we weren't going to stand toe-to-toe with AMRAAM shooters and win. We had to be sneaky.
When Germany reunited and the Luftwaffe inherited 24 MiG-29s, a small cadre of F-4 pilots were sent to the MiG-29 squadron to check out in the jet and then 'teach' already-qualified MiG-29 pilots from the former Nationale Volks Armee (National Peoples' Army) of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic, aka East Germany) how to employ it. The Luftwaffe went through a vetting process of which former East German MiG-29 pilots to retain and which to cut loose. The process was as difficult and it was sometimes harsh. But, in the end, of around 25 MiG-29 pilots in the squadron when I arrived, about half were former East German (Ossis) and the other half were former West Germans (Wessis).
The vetting process was done right and the Luftwaffe picked the right guys all around from both sides. Even though we were enemies only a few years before, the Ossis were all great guys. We shared a common love of flying fighters. Politics, shmolotics.
I got along great with them and they were very receptive to me being in the squadron. The only issues about me being in the wing came from some of the senior enlisted maintainers (almost all Ossis). Some of them were outright hostile.
I avoided bringing up 'us versus them' discussions with the Ossis. If they brought it up, I'd certainly join in the conversation. I didn't want to seem like the conqueror and them the vanquished in the Cold War. We concentrated on making ourselves better MiG-29 pilots. I did get the feeling they understood that at least their training was not up to western standards and they were frustrated by what they were not allowed to do and how innovative thought was crushed. They had great respect for the capabilities of our aircraft and our training.
