EGLIN AFB, Fla.—As Henry Rollins, the lead singer of punk band Black Flag, said, “One defines oneself by reinvention.”
This spirit of reinvention was central to the most recent iteration of the similarly named Virtual Black Flag exercise, conducted March 16-20 at the Virtual Warfare Center’s St. Louis location, which brought together members of the Air Force, Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Space Force.
The exercise, a means of using simulators to operationally test objectives that can’t be accomplished via live flight operations during the annual Black Flag exercise, aimed to take a further step in replicating real-world scenarios to deliver combat-credible tactics, techniques and procedures to combatant commanders.
“We’re incorporating more advanced non-kinetic effects and electronic attacks this year,” said a member who’s authorized to speak on the exercise but is not being named for operational security reasons. “This allows us to integrate these effects without expending exploitable capabilities.”
Indeed, much of Virtual Black Flag 26 consisted of testing new and established TTPs without real-world constraints, allowing them to be codified and fielded more quickly.
“We’re still refining 4th and 5th generation fighter integration and escort tactics versus advanced air-to-air and surface-to-air threats,” the member said. “Working on tactics for attacking enemy ships and figuring out how information moves across the entire battle network will always be main stays in Virtual Black Flag.
“We’re just getting better at it.”
The exercise most recently saw a boost from a litany of upgrades made to the Virtual Warfare Center, including new tools to more realistically simulate electronic warfare and communication networks.
What limiting factors were present in previous iterations of Virtual Black Flag are now being addressed by an expanded network of resources, the member said.
“Our weapons data analysis has been valuable in the past,” they said. “But by sending some of that data to Air Combat Command, which has additional tools for the job, we’re able to streamline processing and close the loop on our debriefs faster.”
Though it’s not only better data fidelity that the exercise brings to the table.
“The best part about Virtual Black Flag is that it has great operational security,” said another member leading the exercise. “While there’s little we can discuss in unclassified spaces, several lessons learned from last year’s exercise have since been refined and distilled into some of Air Combat Command’s tactics improvement proposals.”
Things like jamming enemy radar, disrupting communications and executing digital and electronic attacks are not only more credible due to Virtual Black Flag, but far less likely to be replicated by an adversary, they added.
The data from this year’s exercise will go on to inform much of the scenarios conducted during the live flight Black Flag exercise, slated to take place in September at Point Mugu, California. There, the same TTPs developed and tested in the virtual space will be validated in realistic large-force combat scenarios.