Jets take to the sky for Red Flag operations this week from Nellis AFB

LAS VEGAS ( KLAS ) — You can hear them roar through the valley. A training exercise that brings airmen from the Air Force, Space Force, Navy, Marines, and Air National Guard together to prepare them for the chaos of conflict.

It’s one of the U.S. Air Force’s largest combat training exercises.

“I like to call it chaos inoculation,” explained Col. Eric Winterbottom, 414th Combat Training Squadron commander. “The idea is to put them in as close to a combat scenario as we can in a situation where they are not actually being shot at.”

This Red Flag called 24-3 took off on July 22 and runs through Aug. 2. The training was born out of lessons learned in Vietnam and gives pilots real-world fighting experience. There are three iterations of Red Flag annually. For this one, about 2,000 military personnel and 150 military planes are involved.

This training is done mostly at night, with 75 aircraft an hour launching from Nellis Air Force Base and heading toward the Nevada Test and Training Range to fight a mock war.

“A key part of training for the Air Force is to get that training in the night environment which drives us to be flying from 10 at night to 2 in the morning,” Col. Winterbottom said.

The pilots try to fly directly north to reduce noise to valley residents but sometimes their biggest training elements come from Mother Nature. “We’ve had some thunderstorms as we’ve gone into monsoon season and that has added another challenge the audience works through,” Col. Winterbottom said.

The next generation of fighter pilots is training right here in Las Vegas.

One of the staff on base has completed 100 Red Flags, first as a pilot and now as a contractor. He’ll be there next year for the 50 ^th Anniversary Celebration of Red Flag operations at Nellis.

For more information about this Red Flag: https://www.nellis.af.mil/News/Article/3844862/red-flag-24-3-kicks-off-at-nellis/

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