Topgun

by Dan Pedersen

  That pitch makes the F-35 sound like an early warning aircraft—transformational indeed. It doesn’t say anything about winning a dogfight. Maybe that’s the point, because the pilots who have a lot of experience flying the “penguin” say it’s no dogfighter. My ears are ringing from the echo of the nonsense we heard in the ’60s about the F-4 Phantom transforming the fighter pilot’s traditional mission.

  At Topgun in my day, a pilot had to log a minimum of thirty-five to forty flight hours every month to be considered combat-ready. This is no longer possible. As the F-35 continues to swallow up the money available to naval aviation, the low rate of production all but ensures that our pilots will not soon gain the flight hours that they need to get good. For the past few years Super Hornet pilots have been getting just ten to twelve hours per month between deployments—barely enough to learn to fly the jet safely. The F-35 has far less availability. Its pilots have to rely on simulators to make up the deficit. Its cost per flight hour is exorbitant.

  But the magnitude of the problem of the F-35 is probably best understood in terms of time rather than money. And here it is in a nutshell: We are twenty-seven years into the development cycle of that plane.

  After twenty-seven years and untold billions spent, no fully operational version of the F-35 has reached a U.S. squadron. That’s right. Development started in 1992, yet it has not achieved operational status in any of the services that have ordered it.* The photos we see of the aircraft flying are misleading. Not one of these planes is ready for combat. The Israelis claim to have used the export model of the F-35 in an engagement. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s possible the lucrative foreign market for the plane helps explain its undeserved longevity after nearly three decades of delays and cost overruns. Israel, Japan, and South Korea are supposedly on board to buy it, as are the eight other “partner nations” who are helping to develop it. Unfortunately, the program has run so long that one of those partners, Turkey, is on the verge of no longer being a U.S. ally. (Maybe they’ll still fulfill their contract with Lockheed to keep supplying important parts for the F-35 as they cozy up to the Russians.)

  Twenty-seven years. That’s more than a generation. Compare that to the development timeline of the F-14 Tomcat. The elapsed time from the Navy’s first request for proposals to the deployment of the F-14 in the fleet was four years. Yes, four years. With the F-18 Hornet, it was nine years.

  Now twenty-seven?

  Something is rotten in Washington, and one day, sadly, we will lose a war because of it. Maybe that tragic result will serve to wake up our political and defense establishments and give them the courage to begin removing the rot.

  Meanwhile, the state of the art in air-to-air combat as it’s actually practiced over the battlefields of the world doesn’t seem to have advanced very much. The future looks a lot like the past. Let me tell you a very recent story.

  On June 18, 2017, Lieutenant Commander Michael “Mob” Tremel, a Topgun graduate and former instructor, took off from USS George H. W. Bush in an F/A-18E Super Hornet. Flying a close air support mission near Raqqa, Syria, he led four Super Hornets inland to join a “stack” of jets waiting their turn to bomb Islamic State positions. That was when he and his cohorts detected the Syrian aircraft. The approaching pilot ignored numerous warnings to turn away. After a Sukhoi Su-22 Fitter made a bombing run on allied troops, Commander Tremel engaged.

  Adhering to the rules of engagement, he made visual identification and fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder. The enemy pilot detected the launch and dropped flares. The missile, “spoofed” in spite of all its advanced features, missed. Tremel switched to a radar-guided AMRAAM—the Sparrow’s replacement—and fired. The eight-minute affair ended with the Syrian plane exploding, leaving Tremel to dodge a cloud of debris. The pilot, Captain Ali Fahd, ejected and floated to earth below his chute. It was the first victory by an American fighter pilot since the spring of 1999, when Air Force pilots bagged three Yugoslav MiG-29s in the Kosovo War.

  In the 2017 action, three of the four Hornet pilots were Topgun grads, so they would be well qualified to teach us the lessons here, which are familiar. First, high technology can still be foiled by simple countermeasures. Missiles are never a sure thing. But the real lesson was that, against the fashionably futuristic expectations, Tremel was forced to fight in close visual range because the rules of engagement required it. Why spend fortunes on technology that our own rules of engagement make useless?

  Even if its many problems are solved and it’s fielded in numbers that matter, the F-35 and its beyond-visual-range capability will mean nothing if the pilot has to see and identify his target before shooting it. That has been true now for more than forty years. As Condor says, “If you can see him, he can see you, and you’re in a dogfight.” This is not where the “penguin” is at its best. At least it will, apparently, have a gun. That’s one thing they might be getting right.

  I was a pretty good fighter pilot, but I might be old-fashioned. I devoutly believe that simpler is better. I’ve learned that lesson repeatedly in my career. After thirty years in naval aviation, I can tell you what a plane can do in the air by looking at its engine specs and the sweep of its wings and its tail. Few planes I’ve seen are better dogfighters than the tried-and-true F-5, the old Northrop birds we used at Topgun as aggressors. Some are still in service today.

  At night, sometimes while I lay beside the pool watching the jets and satellites ease by overhead, I use my imagination to design my ultimate fighter aircraft. I’d make it a basic hot rod, a single-seater akin to the old F-5. Light, maneuverable, and compact—hard to see in a fight. I’d want it cheap, easy to mass-produce and replace should we start taking losses in combat over time.

  The cockpit systems will be engineered to avoid overwhelming the pilot’s senses with data. My pilots will not be emotionally and mentally overloaded by the bells and whistles that characterize the fifth-generation cockpit. The Navy busts its budgets by installing integrated command and control electronics, but most pilots I know don’t touch them. So we’ll get rid of them. My guys won’t need a non-combatant staffer or distant admiral somewhere hearing all their comms and butting in to micromanage. The only conversations they’ll need are with a good radar controller somewhere, their mother carrier, and their squadron mates.

  That little hot rod will cost less than ten million dollars apiece, and so we’ll never have to sell it to a foreign country. Except to the Brits and the Israelis, of course. With the money we save, the enlisted men in the maintenance hangar will have everything they need. The defense contractors can golf on their own dime.

  Give me a few hundred planes like the F-5N, with a reliable gun, a lead-computing gunsight, four Sidewinders, electronic countermeasures support, and pilots who get forty or fifty flight hours a month, and we’ll beat any air force that’s bankrupting its nation with fifth-generation stealthy penguins. Pilot retention problems will go away.

  Because the basic truth of fighter combat remains the same: It is not the aircraft that wins a fight, it’s the man in the cockpit. Flying is a perishable skill. It has to be practiced constantly and maintained on a consistent basis. That isn’t happening anymore, thanks to the year-to-year budgeting process called for by “the sequester” and its defense cuts. And on that count, looking back, I can see that as bad as things looked to us over Vietnam, my comrades and I may well have flown in the best of times.

  Darrell “Condor” Gary’s logbook for June 1976 shows that he flew forty-six flights that month for a total or 65.5 hours, including five in the F-4N Phantom, seventeen in the A-4E Skyhawk, and twenty-four in the F-5E Tiger. All of these were real air combat maneuvering flights, not cross-country transits. With that much time in the air, Condor says, you couldn’t avoid becoming proficient as a warrior.

  My boys will all be dogfighters. With enough planes in inventory, we can return to the days when any pilot who’s in good with the senior chief in maintenance control can check out a bird and go find a �
��fight club” somewhere off the coast. That’s how we’ll sharpen our edge in dogfighting again. Give those boys lots of flight hours under heavy-caliber leadership and they’ll win almost every time. I feel so strongly about the need for more pilot training that I’d propose this: We should consider tapping our federal petroleum reserve for jet fuel production, so that our aviation training commands can keep new pilots flying every day. If we wait until we’re at the threshold of a war before doing it, it will be too late.

  I run through this mental exercise often. Always I come back to our Topgun axiom: What matters is the man, not the machine. So let’s talk about what a good fighter pilot candidate looks like. Over the years and thousands of aviators I’ve known, I noticed the best shared some common traits.

  A good pilot should have a strong family background with a patriotic mindset and a self-starting work ethic. He should believe in something greater than himself while remaining self-reliant and confident without being overbearing. (Some ego is necessary—I wouldn’t want a soul filled with doubt flying my wing.) An athletic background helps, because when properly coached at the right age, youngsters learn trust, teamwork, and goal setting. They’ll need all those things in the air. I’ll pass on anybody who displays his participation trophies. Self-esteem without real accomplishment will make anyone crash and burn. Give me a committed B student with a boiling will to win over an A-plus scholar with a careerist agenda, and we’ll be on our way.

  Finally, it’s important to have a sincere interest in the history and lore of your calling. Good pilots strive constantly for self-improvement. In my first years in the Navy, I had the opportunity to meet the World War II generation and hear their stories and lessons. I read every air combat memoir I could and gleaned a lot of little things from them that helped me in my journey. We lived on the edge of life and death, and the margin between them was narrow. I think Jimmy Doolittle bought me a scotch because he saw that we had shared residency there. History is a wellspring of lifesaving lessons. No one really invents anything.

  Successful leaders recognize those traits and encourage them, even at the risk of bending a rule—or a jet—once in a while. Just like we did in Miramar every day, and much as you saw in that thirty-three-year-old movie, long may it stream. In between its scenes of beach volleyball, romantic sunset motorcycle rides along the runway, and crazy, dangerous moves in the air, the movie has some important messages. It reminds me of better days. And I think that reminder can help us today, if we let it.

  Well, that’s what naval aviation would look like if I were King of Everything. Since I’m not, I think I ought to call it a night. Come on inside; I have one last thing to show you.

  I kept my 1950s Ray-Bans until just a few years ago, when I replaced the lenses and gave them to my granddaughter, at her request, as a Christmas gift. After fifty years, I figured it was time for a new pair. My youngest daughter, Candice, ended up with my Star of David and gold chain. But I still have my little mouse. After all the sea duty he endured, he enjoys a cushy retirement on my bookshelf. From time to time I look at him and say, It was a hell of a ride, wasn’t it, little fella?

  He is surrounded by books and other treasured items from my career. But what I value most was my time at Miramar with the Bros. Their enduring friendships are my real treasures, not any physical things in my library. Topgun will always be the centerpiece of my career and my life’s most important accomplishment. None of it would have happened without the Bros, or the ever-present hands of God.

  In 1956, at Whiting Field, in Florida, I entered primary flight training to become a naval aviator. We flew the legendary North American SNJ. Those well-worn birds were usually oil-streaked, like this one.

  Ensign Pedersen at NAS North Island, 1959, with my first operational squadron, VF(AW)-3. Flying the F4D Skyray, I learned from such great pilots as World War II ace Eugene Valencia.

  Standing twenty-four-hour alerts with our “Fords,” we were always ready to intercept a Soviet bomber attack before it reached the West Coast.

  An F-4 Phantom intercepts a Soviet Tu-95 Bear somewhere over the western Pacific. These encounters were usually quite friendly.

  America’s first nuclear-powered carrier, USS Enterprise, became my home on Yankee Station in 1967. In four months, our air group lost thirteen of its hundred pilots.

  An F-4 Phantom releases a load of Mark 82 bombs over South Vietnam. By 1967, the Navy was suffering from a shortage of bombs.

  Four North Vietnamese pilots with twenty U.S. aircraft to their credit at a runway near Hanoi. We were not prepared for close-in dogfights against the agile MiG-17. Defeating the Russian-built interceptors became the founding premise of Topgun.

  The boldfaced names were my Original Bros at Topgun. I told them our mission would be the most important thing we did in our military careers. “We hold lives in our hands.”

  Jim “Hawkeye” Laing, one of our Original Bros, stands beside his F-4 Phantom prior to the first strike against Kep Airfield near Hanoi in April 1967. Laing was shot down during this mission and was later rescued by helicopter.

  Jim Laing was the only Original Bro to eject twice as a result of battle damage over North Vietnam. This stunning photo, taken by Jim’s wingman, shows him ejecting on April 24, 1967, after the strike on Kep. His pilot ejected a split second later.

  Mel “Rattler” Holmes was the finest Phantom pilot in the Navy in 1969. Tough, relentlessly aggressive in the air and on the ground, Mel was a key part of Topgun’s initial success as our tactics and aerodynamics specialist.

  Darrell “Condor” Gary and Jim Laing aboard Kitty Hawk on Yankee Station, on April 24, 1967, hours before Jim and his pilot were shot down and later rescued.

  Jerry “Ski-Bird” Sawatzky towers over Mike Guenther, one of our adversary pilots, as they stand in front of a pair of A-4 Skyhawks. Jerry was a natural teacher at Topgun and a superb aviator too.

  Once we had our team assembled, we needed an office and classroom space. Steve Smith found this abandoned modular trailer and paid a crane operator a case of scotch to deliver it to our area at Miramar.

  Mel Holmes and Steve Smith designed the Topgun patch in the Miramar officer’s club one night on a cocktail napkin. Complaints that it might offend the Russians soon ceased.

  At Topgun, we painted our aggressor A-4s in camouflage schemes used by air forces around the world. Some of those paint jobs rendered the little aircraft almost invisible.

  Here I am with J. C. Smith in a TA-4 Skyhawk belonging to Ken Wiley’s VF-126. Ken’s Skyhawks became Topgun’s initial adversary aircraft.

  A MiG-21 flies over Area 51. Captured Soviet aircraft played a key role in helping us develop the tactics to defeat them.

  From April through October 1972, during Operation Linebacker, F-4 squadrons downed twenty-one MiGs, losing just four aircraft in return. The stunning success validated the Topgun program.

  Though we learned to beat the MiGs, the war ended in defeat in 1975. Condor flew high cover the day the last Americans were evacuated from rooftops around Saigon. Meanwhile, the South China Sea was carpeted with hundreds of vessels filled with refugees fleeing the North Vietnamese Army.

  After Vietnam, Topgun continued teaching new generations of fighter pilots. Here, a Topgun instructor demonstrates maneuvering an F-14 Tomcat against a MiG-21 during a class in the mid-1970s.

  An adversary TA-4 painted in a Soviet Air Force scheme.

  One of Topgun’s F-5 adversary aircraft goes vertical off the California coast. The Freedom Fighter did a fine impression of a MiG.

  After leaving Topgun, I took over VF-143 and in 1976 commanded the Coral Sea air wing.

  The F-14 Tomcat reached the fleet in the mid-1970s and served until 2006. Made famous by the movie Top Gun, the F-14 was beloved by all who flew it. I regret that I never did.

  When the Navy promoted me to captain in 1978, my flying days were over. I commanded the fleet replenishment ship USS Wichita then took the aircraft carrier Ranger to the Persian
Gulf.

  At sea aboard the Wichita, I’m in the dark jacket surrounded by the bridge crew. The ship won several highly coveted Battle Efficiency Awards (“Battle E’s”) for superior performance in an operating environment.

  The Ranger and one of her escorts replenish at sea. Taking command at Subic Bay in October 1980 was the capstone of my career.

  Monroe “Hawk” Smith was my air ops officer on the Ranger. He was the skipper of Topgun from 1976 to 1978.

  Mary Beth and me at my parents’ home in Whittier, California. I flew home from flight training in Texas over Christmas 1956.

  Mary Beth and I reconnected thirty-two years after our breakup. We were married in Denmark, in the church that had baptized my father. The ring on my finger is the one she gave me for Christmas in 1956.

  The Navy and Air Force have staked their futures on the F-35 Lightning II. Development of the so-called Joint Strike Fighter (some pilots call it the “penguin”) began in 1992. Twenty-seven years later, we do not yet have a fully operational squadron and it is the most expensive weapons program in history.