-This fighter jet will soon be on the hunt
for American and Japanese F-16s,
and I'm going along for the ride.
-This is flanker one. -The mission --
stop the allied fighters
from destroying our ground defenses miles away.
-Going to the right. Here we go.
-My pilot banks hard.
He's looking for a clean shot, keeping an eye on the displays
that will alert him to danger -- long-range air-to-air missiles
or surface-to-air missiles from below.
I hope we're lucky.
I'd like to make it back home in one piece.
But in the blink of an eye, we're hit.
-Well, we just died. -Or so we're told.
-It was a good run.
-But I won't yank the ejection handle or plummet
to the ground in flames,
and we're not in a dogfight over the Korean Peninsula,
the South China Sea, or Eastern Europe.
We're flying over Alaska,
32,000 feet over what the Air Force calls JPARC --
the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex.
It's a massive piece of sky, roughly the size of Missouri.
Where we just got hit,
is that sort of a typical spot to start losing planes?
-It all depends on how the blue side is doing.
So, that was --
seems like from my perspective, in the east lane,
that was pretty good for blue for the first tactic.
-Okay.
Lieutenant Colonel Jason Monaco, call sign "Majik",
is the commander of the 18th
Aggressor Squadron, the Blue Foxes.
They're stationed at Eielson Air Force Base,
26 miles outside Fairbanks.
Their job is to simulate
the tactics of enemy fighter jets
during training exercises, code name "Red Flag."
-We'll set up our system to replicate the aircraft
that we're supposed to be replicating.
We can simulate that we are an enemy country
launching additional fighters into the mix
to try to fight the blue force,
who's trying to execute their mission.
-It's like laser tag,
but with multi-million-dollar weapons of war.
-Red Flag -- Alaska, again, provides the opportunity
to provide the first 10 combat missions
in a high-level environment in a training atmosphere.
So for those that have been training to a scenario
in the Middle East,
as we look to other areas of the world
that they might have to operate, the Red Flag --
Alaska scenarios provide
that opportunity to train in that environment.
-During this Red Flag exercise,
the blue force included a mix of U.
S. and Japanese F-16s,
The F-16 is called a fourth-generation fighter.
They're very capable war planes,
but they lack the sophisticated electronics
and stealth capability of fifth-generation fighters.
These are your F-22 Raptors
and the brand-new F-35 joint-strike fighters.
Eielson is preparing for the arrival of the F-35s.
These hangars will house 54 of the $80 million jets.
Already, there are two and a half squadrons of F-22 Raptors
south of Eielson at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
-Within about 18 months, Alaska's gonna have over
100 fifth-generation fighters -- combat-coded fifth-gen fighters.
So supersonic stealth fighters.
No place on the planet Earth will have that
kind of fifth-gen fighter power.
-The Pentagon is attempting to pivot its focus
from ground wars in the Middle East
and Afghanistan to countering China and Russia.
It also needs to prepare for the advanced weapons and jets
that adversaries already have, including the Chinese J-20
and the Russian Su-57. And the U.
S.
Military needs a place as big as JPARC to train.
-Sensors that we have in the fifth-generation-type aircraft
can just detect and see the battle-space environment
at a much further range.
So in order to capitalize on that capability,
you need to have extended ranges
in order to execute those tactics.
-But there's a problem -- JPARC can't simulate the weapons
of an advanced adversary like China or Russia.
That's according to a recently declassified Defense
Department Inspector General report.
In it, pilots and officers stationed at Eielson
say that JPARC lacks modern electronic warfare systems.
One example cited in the report is a Soviet era
surface-to-air missile system.
It's actually sitting on the ground at JPARC.
The report says this represents a 1980s threat,
and that the F-22 and F-35
don't recognize these ancient systems as a threat
because the technology in these fighters
is more advanced than what's on the ground.
JPARC has the space to simulate
a massive battlefield of the future.
It just can't simulate the advanced weaponry
that would be deployed on it.
At least not yet.
-So, as far as modernization, I will say this.
The JPARC right now is still very challenging
for our fourth-gen players.
It's challenging for a small number of fifth-gen players.
We hope to grow it so that it's challenging on a large-force
or a major-force exercise scale.
-The Pentagon is beginning to address some of JPARC's needs.
The first step is $87 million in range upgrades.
-So, we're gonna use that money to upgrade
some of our surface-to-air threats
and a lot of our detection capabilities, as well,
to get more realistic training in that combat-like environment.
-I think there's a broader and an increasing recognition that,
as we move to a fifth-generation Air Force,
that JPARC is gonna be one of the critical,
critical places to train.
-Lieutenant Colonel Anderson says the report
is helping guide the U.
S.
Military to identify shortcomings
and prepare for the future 10, 15, and 20 years from now.
But the F-35s start arriving soon.
The first squadron based in Alaska
has already been established,
and it'll receive its first shipment of jets this spring.
The Air Force says it will start making upgrades
to JPARC by 2021, beginning with two advanced
surface-to-air missile simulators.
Then it wants to add even more as money becomes available.