Above left to right:
TOPGUN received
12 F-16A/Bs that
were destined
for Pakistan but
embargoed and
donated to the
US Navy.
This F-16A wears
a newly applied
scheme.
An AIM-9 plus
a P5 tactical air
combat training
system (TACTS)
pod, ready to load.
TACTS enables
each mission to
be followed in real
time and played
out post-fl ight.
Below: TOPGUN
instructors fl ying
to meet their
students for some
section tactics.more BFM in a two-week period here than
they have done in the past year or two.’
The BFM portion is split into o ensive,
defensive, and high-aspect and the
students y each of these four times at
least. Due to Fallon’s elevation above
sea level the course detaches away to
Lemoore, Oceana or Miramar for the
BFM phase.
The remaining phases are all own at
Fallon, with the air-to-surface portionseeing the students being exposed to the
full inventory of weapons. Despite the
addition of air-to-ground, the main focus
remains the air-to-air work. Since crews
y a lot of close air support in their eet
squadrons, TOPGUN deals more with what
they don’t do every day.Being the best
Upon graduating from the course, some
students elect to remain at Fallon to
become instructors — there are currently
33 at TOPGUN — while others move
to the east and west coast weapons
schools, to the strike department within
NAWDC and to operational evaluation
with VX-9 ‘Vampires’.
The path to being an instructor is even
more demanding than the initial course.
‘As you enter instructor under training
[IUT] you start with adversary ying’,explains ‘Ru es’, who is the TOPGUN
AIM-9 Sidewinder SME. ‘You also start
your pre-board lectures as you are
assigned a SME [subject matter expert]
topic’. The boards are designed to work
the new SME up towards the ‘murder
board’. This is the sign-o for an SME and
their knowledge base that quali es them
to teach on the specialist lecture to a
class. These are fed in as required in the
four phases, with around 20 SME topics
covering everything from hardware and
systems to employment and tactics.
In addition to being a SME, the
instructors must be quali ed to teach
the relevant parts of the course. ‘To
become a BFM instructor it takes 25-30
sorties,’ says ‘Ru es’. ‘You can’t instruct
BFM, for example, until you get your BFM
instructor quali cation — and it’s the
most rigorous.’TOPGUN skipper
CDR Christopher
Papaioanu.64 September 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
// NFWS AT 50
60-67 Supp_TOPGUN Today C.indd 64 19/07/2018 14:13