Maj. Mark A. Snowden, the 3rd Wing's chief of air-to-air tactics and a participant in Cope India 2004, admitted that the US Air Force underestimated the Indians. "The outcome of the [2004] exercise boils down to [the fact that] they ran tactics that were more advanced than we expected," he told Aviation Week last year. "They had done some training with the French that we knew about, but we did not expect them to be a very well-trained air force. That was silly."
This should not be a shock to anybody. Hardware is the least important aspect of war. But this story doesn't really tell us what happened. I was going to write about the restrictive rules that denied us our edges, the need to stroke the ego of a budding ally, the difference between an air force that fights as an entire system and aircraft, and the need to instill fear in the hearts of Congressional appropriations officials to get the Raptor funded up. But Winds of Change does a nice job for me.
So just go there.
Short story: the Indians have good pilots and our Air Force hasn't degenerated into second class status.
UPDATE: Strategypage adds a couple other useful points that I should have made (and which I assumed were so obvious that I failed to think them worthy of mention). First (and BVR means "beyond visual range. AMRAAM is our latest missile to strike BVR):
But there’s also the security aspect. Other air forces also have BVR missiles (usually Russian), and the American pilots don’t want to give away the electronic tricks and tactics they would use to defeat the Russian missiles, and ensure that AMRAAM would succeed.
That's always a problem when we use the stuff in war--others will watch and we'll lose the element of surprise the next time up. This applies in exercises, too. Which is one reason I hate the exchanges with PLA officers who visit US ships. Our government thinks we are scaring them into not fighting with us by displaying our technological superiority. The Chinese think they are just getting insights into how to fight us. Hopefully we had our best stuff when showing off to a potential enemy as much as we hide our stuff when exercising against a potential ally. But I digress. Point two of Strategypgage that I want to add:
For the Indian Air Force, such training exercises are good because it allows them to train against F-16s (which their long time foe, Pakistan, has). For the American pilots, they get to operate against Su-30s (which China has.) For all concerned, it’s a chance to fight against pilots from a different culture, who may use different, and sometimes superior, tactics and methods.
It is always better to exercise against the type of equipment and tactics of a potential enemy rather than against mirror images who look and think like you do.
Like I said, don't panic over this. Lots going on that the press just doesn't understand. This lesson applies to lots of things the press reports on.
