The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) plans to activate a second squadron of adversary aircraft to meet the future air combat training needs of its strike fighter squadrons. The second aggressor squadron will provide the East Coast with training assets similar to those of the West Coast.
According to the Marine Corps Aviation Plan 2022, released this week, the 402nd Marine Fighter Training Squadron (VMFT-402) will be activated in fiscal year 2023 at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, and is scheduled to be airworthy by early 2024.
To equip the new squadron, the Marine Corps has procured 11 additional F-5 aircraft from the Swiss Air Force through Naval Air Systems Command. The aircraft will be delivered to the USMC over a four-year period, beginning in the fourth quarter of 2023.
According to SEAPOWER, the official publication of the U.S. Navy, the Navy and Marine Corps F-5 fleet is being upgraded to increase its capabilities and extend its service life to the F-5N+ and F-5F+ version. The fleet is being modernized with digital cockpits at a rate of two to three aircraft per year.
The Navy Air Systems Command plans to integrate Collins Aerospace’s Tactical Combat Training System – Increment II (TCTS II), which allows for «synthetic threat injection» to create highly realistic simulated training environments.
“Serving as a training asset for the entire MAGTF, as well as the joint force, the F-5 has seen adversary requirements grow significantly over the past 13 years”, largely due to the pilot training requirements of the F-35 fleet’s replacement squadrons VMFA-501 and VMFA-502. “Annual fleet adversary requirements are expected to also increase for transitioning squadrons from 12,000 air-to-air sorties in [fiscal 2022 to 17,000 sorties per year in order to meet T2.0 requirements in [fiscal 2025].”.
One of the major bottlenecks for the Marine Corps in ensuring the proper training of its combat aviators is the low availability of aircraft suitable for conducting aggressor training.
The USMC has a need this year for 15,000 aggressor training sorties, but the only squadron currently available, VMFT-401, can only generate 3,300 sorties per year, given the number of aircraft available and the state of the material.
That is why a second squadron, the VMFT-402, is to be activated, eventually consisting of 8 F-5N+ and two F-5F+.
The U.S. Air Force (USAF), as well as many other air forces around the world, are increasingly supplying their aggressor training needs by contracting with private companies that use fighter aircraft that were decommissioned by other nations. This is a spectacularly booming business and several of these companies now constitute veritable private air forces.
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However, the Navy and USMC analysis is that «commercial air services cannot meet all adversary (training) needs. The future involves multiple solutions including efficient use of the F-5 fleet, exploration of low-cost training opportunities, incorporation of live, virtual and constructive capability, and commercial air services to augment requirements.»
