Exercise RED FLAG 25-2

2025 marked my fourth Red Flag Exercise and I seem to be 50/50 on getting the good weather. I went out the first week this year, Monday was nice, then two days of clouds and strong winds. Then Thursday rained in the morning and the afternoon started clearing for recoveries, but the wind was still 25-30 mph right in our face for landings.

This Red Flag was much lighter than previous years. No Recon aircraft flew during the day, the E-3 only went up at night and even the evening launches were later than normal. No F-22 or F-15E units were part of this edition.

The aircraft and units participating in this flag were:

The Foreign Units for this flag consisted of Typhoons from the Royal Saudi Air Force, F-16s from the Turkish Air Force and F-16E/Fs from the UAE Air Force. Turkey was parked on the far side of the ramp and they usually did Dream Departures instead of Flexing over the raceway. 120th FS out of Colorado & the VMFA-232 out of Miramar helped round out the Blue Team. B-52s out of Minot were the interdiction team with five B-52s on the ramp.

The Red Team were all based out of Nellis. I noticed less painted Aggressors out of the 64th AGRS now that the 706th is now based there. I only saw three Aggressor-painted jets, Splinter, Ghost and Arctic, but I did end up seeing the Black Wraith was also there on a YouTube video. The 65th AGRS brought their wrapped F-35 out on my last day.

Tanker support was handled by four different units, 6th AW from MacDill AFB, 92nd AW from Fairchild AFB, and two ANG units; 106th ARS from Alabama ANG and the 108th ARS of Illinois ANG.