Rapid Fire March 21, 2013: Towards US Budget Agreement?

• The US Senate passed HR 933 with a 73-26 roll call to fund DoD and the rest of the federal government until September 30, after considering a final batch of amendments. The bill goes back to the House today, and it looks like a done deal. Update: indeed, as the house clears the Senate’s amendments with a 318-109 roll call. This bakes in the sequester for the rest of the fiscal year, pending a presidential signature that will no doubt be expedited.

• The FY14 US President Budget coming next month will offer to postpone cuts to the 2019-23 FYDP, said acquisition chief Frank Kendall at an NDIA event.

Supporting the USA’s F-5 Aggressor Fighters

Top Gun, redux

In the 1980s movie Top Gun, the revolutionary “MiG-28s” operated by the enemy air force were actually F-5E Tiger IIs, derived from a family of fighters whose design concept dates back to the mid 1950s. The F-5 family of aircraft were produced in large numbers, as they were an extremely popular export item. Many are still operated by countries around the world, and the US Air Force used them for many years as “aggressor” aircraft in Dissimilar Air Combat Training (DACT). They were, and remain, excellent for simulating similarly small, low profile adversaries like the MiG-21s and MiG-19s that gave American pilots such trouble over Vietnam. Or the IAF MiG-21s that caused trouble at COPE India, for that matter.

“F-5Ns” are still routinely flown by American Navy and Marines adversary squadrons in training exercises, where they simulate small, low-cross-section (and hence hard to spot) enemies. Keeping them in service requires maintenance contracts – and some timely help from the Swiss also came in handy.