One four ex-Israeli AF F-16A/Bs delivered to Top Aces' facilities at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport in ... [+]
On January 28, a Russian AN-124 airlifter arrived at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Arizona, direct from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. In its hold were four disassembled former Israeli Air Force F-16s bound for Canadian-owned air adversary services provider Top Aces. They’re the first 4th generation fighter-adversary aircraft acquired by a private company, a desirable commodity and a coup for Top Aces. Ironically, they’re not contracted for any aggressor work yet.
The Montreal-based company was one of seven selected in 2019 to participate in the U.S. Air Force’s $6.4 billion Combat Air Force Contracted Air Support (CAF CAS) contract which sought tenders for advanced adversary air capabilities at a dozen USAF bases.
Last July, Airborne Tactical Advantage Company, Tactical Air Support Inc., and Draken International were the first three firms to be awarded contracts under the CAF CAS umbrella. Blue Air Training subsequently landed a contract last September while Air USA and Coastal Defense are still vying for the remaining Air Force tenders along with Top Aces.
Top Aces President Russ Quinn says that the company is bidding on a pending contract for aggressor services at Nevada’s Nellis AFB where the USAF’s own aggressor squadrons are based. Air Combat Command’s CAF CAS program office has already released a draft RFP for the adversary services
“They have stated the final RFP will be released in the September timeframe but have not stated when award will be announced. I would expect it will be awarded before the end of 2021,” Quinn says. “The F-16 fits very nicely into what they have laid out so far.”
That timeline leaves six or more months during which Top Aces’ F-16s could sit idle. Quinn, a former USAF F-16 pilot, Nellis-based aggressor pilot/unit commander and former Thunderbird, says Top Aces will look for ad hoc work for its F-16s in the meantime.
Top Aces president and former U.S. Air Force F-16 aggressor pilot, Russ Quinn.
“We’ll have aircraft available to support opportunities throughout the summer to augment Air Force and Navy exercises. There’s a number of places we could put them to work, not on a long-term contract operating location like Nellis, but we’re going to put them to work as soon as we can through Air Combat Command’s program office.”
Top Aces already has adversary air contracts with the Royal Canadian Air Force under its Contracted Airborne Training Services program as well with Germany. It uses a fleet of ex-Israeli A-4N Skyhawks, ex-German Dornier Alpha Jets and Bombardier Lear 35 business jets for adversary and other contract air services.
Four F-16s - two single-seat F-16As and a pair of two-seat F-16Bs - came in the first shipment. The company expects to receive follow-on aircraft in pairs in the coming months. Quinn says the next two jets are slated to be flight tested in Israel next week and that eight F-16s will be at Phoenix-Mesa by early summertime, 12 on the ramp before fall. Eventually, Top Aces will have a fleet of 29 ex-IAF F-16A/Bs.
The aircraft are 1979/1980-built Block 10 F-16s. Israel retired the aircraft (reportedly from its own aggressor squadrons) in 2014 and put them on the market in 2016. The opportunity to acquire them came through Top Aces’ “relationships and knowledge” along with considerable effort in cooperation with the U.S. State Department Quinn explains.
“This happened because we’ve got an organization and people who are committed to this mission.”
The organization includes over 270 employees in the U.S. and Canada, some 40 of whom are pilots with backgrounds in the Canadian, German and American militaries. Top Aces will be adding new pilot hires, specifically former aggressor pilots, as its F-16 fleet gets work.
For now, the jets are being reassembled at the company’s Arizona base. “The reassembly isn’t all that complex for folks who know how to do it,” Quinn says. They’ll go through FAA-certification and USAF evaluation for Military Flight Release and are expected to be flight-ready by April or May.
An Israeli Air Force fighter F-16A taking off from the Uvda Air Force base in the southern Israel ... [+]
The company says the F-16s are in good shape structurally with considerable airframe life remaining as well as good engines which can be relatively easily refurbished.
“We have enough life in the [F-16] fleet to service Nellis for 10 years,” Quinn maintains.
The aircraft bring appealing aggressor threat replication qualities including their airframe performance, commonality with the USAF’s own F-16 aggressor aircraft, and useful avionics. These include Northrop-Grumman
The systems are tied together by Top Aces’ own open mission system (OMS), developed over the last five years with an unnamed partner and recently tested on one of the company’s A-4 Skyhawks.
“The reason we developed it was to be able to provide a federated system,” Quinn says. “I spent 20 years flying the F-16. Upgrading the software for an airplane like this is quite an extensive [undertaking]. From a commercial perspective that’s not something we want to do. We want to keep these airplanes as pure from an airworthiness perspective as we can.”
With the OMS, Top Aces expects to be able to “present and work some complex tactics that we need to represent some of the near peer threats that the Air Force is seeing.”
Quinn says he foresees the company’s F-16s flying in mixed formations with the Air Force’s own aggressor aircraft, sharing the same situational awareness thanks to the OMS. He adds that the F-16s bring another sought after capability - they can refuel inflight from the same aerial refueling tankers that USAF aircraft use, using the same boom refueling apparatus.
A pair of the first batch of F-16s loaded on an An-124 airlifter before leaving Israel.
They’re attractive qualities though Top Aces won’t be the only 4th gen aggressor game in town for long. Last March, Quincy, Illinois-based Air USA announced it had secured a contract to acquire 46 former Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18A/B Hornets as part of its plans to bid for the USAF contracts. The jets will have AN/APG-73 radars used by the F/A-18C/D as well as Elta EL-L/8222 electronic warfare pods and Northrop Grumman
In the longer term, even these may not be enough to sustain business however. In a recent interview with Aviation Week & Space Technology, outgoing Air Force Assistant Secretary Will Roper opined that AI-enabled unmanned aircraft now under development in the USAF’s Skyborg program could take on the adversary air mission as their first objective.
“We pay a lot of money to have people and planes to train against that do not go into conflict with us,” Roper said. “We can offload the adversary air mission to an artificially intelligent system that can learn and get better as it’s doing its mission.”
Russ Quinn welcomes the basic idea but places it in the context of private adversary contracting.
“We look forward to working with the Air Force on bringing that kind of capability into the commercial adversary world... if you’re able to pull that off, it would be a wonderful to train a 5th Gen platform whether low observable or very high speed unmanned.”
Top Aces will almost certainly be in contention for the Nellis contract based on capability. Familiarity and connections won’t hurt either - one of Quinn’s last flying jobs in the USAF was as deputy commander of the 57th Adversary Tactics Group at Nellis.
“We know Nellis well and we bring a culture and capability that would integrate very well,” Quinn asserts.
