More here:The U.S. Air Force formally re-established the 65th Aggressor Squadron (AGRS) on June 9 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The unit will exclusively fly the F-35A Lightning II and dedicate its work to replicating the advanced airpower capabilities that are emerging from China. The first two aircraft to be assigned to the unit have been revealed in a new bespoke aggressor paint scheme that makes use of existing radar-absorbent coatings.
“Due to the growing threat posed by PRC [People’s Republic of China] fifth- and sixth-gen fighter development, we must use a portion of our daily fifth-generation aircraft today at Langley, Elmendorf, Hill, Eielson, and now Nellis, to replicate adversary fifth-generation capabilities,” said Air Combat Command commander Gen. Mark Kelly. “Precisely because we have this credible threat, when we do replicate a fifth-gen adversary, it has to be done professionally. That's the aggressors.”
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“Nellis has reached a turning point. We are focusing on the higher-end threats, higher-end missions,” Col. Scott Mills, commander of the 57th Operations Group, exclusively told The War Zone. “Aggressors themselves represent a huge conglomeration of subject matter experts that focus mostly on Russia and China. The 65th will focus on China, and we’re talking about doctrine, their training, and their capabilities, so that when [the 65th AGRS is] flying, we are actually modeling the pacing challenge as closely as we can. Using the F-35 as an aggressor allows pilots to train against low-observable threats similar to what adversaries are developing.”
The 65th AGRS will be equipped with early-production F-35As, the first of which – revealed at Nellis on June 9 in its new aggressor scheme – was initially delivered to the resident 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron (TES) in 2013. “There’s been discussion over taking F-35s and putting them into an aggressor unit, but the fact is we have some older [build] Lot F-35s that will never be combat coded – we will take those assets, decrease some of their capability, and make them a perfect representation of Chinese threats,” explained Mills.
The 65th AGRS will support the USAF Weapons School at Nellis with respect to the fifth-generation adversary training, as well as being a vital new element of the aggressor force assigned to Exercise Red Flag. "With the cadre of people that we have coming here [to join the 65th AGRS], we have some high-time F-35 pilots who will understand exactly how to perform the aircraft and exactly how to best emulate those threats that are out there,” Mills commented.
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