After three weeks of air-to-air combat exercises between the US Air Force and the Royal Malaysian Air Force, the airmen involved believe Cope Taufan 2006 proved a new level of interoperability. For the USAF F-15 pilots, flying with the RMAF MiG-29s provided a rare opportunity. The whole point of the exercise, says Lt. Gen. David Deptula, commander of the Pacific Air Forces warfighting center at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, was to help create an integrated team and the event “most certainly exceeded” that goal.
In the face of Chinese war plans to disrupt U.S. command-and-control networks in the event of a conflict, the Air Force needs to focus less on its “connect everything” efforts and prepare its combat aviators to fight without a constant connection to higher-ups, according to a new report from AFA’s…
