So why don't you, you just give us a, uh, the quick overview of what the Red Eagles and the Constant Peg program was.

Yeah, really the short of it was, and, uh, you know, I mention this whenever I do a presentation anywhere, but think about a program wh-which, again, a lot of your viewers have never heard about, but it was perhaps arguably the best-kept secret of the Cold War.

And think of it in these terms.

During the Cold War, in the late, literal late 1970s up through late 1988, the US Air Force had an entire squadron of MiG, MiG-21s, MiG-23s, tucked away at a secluded base way in the northwest corner of the Nellis Air Force Base ranges, um, highly restricted airfield, but we had an entire squadron.

We had MiG-21s and MiG-23s, and what we used those for is we had an elite cadre of people that flew those airplanes and flew those airplanes in, uh, really pitched battles against our frontline fighter pilots, whether it be Air Force, Navy, or Marine Corps.

And the whole purpose of the program was to take it another step beyond either the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, Navy Top Gun, the Air Force Aggressors, and show those frontline fighter pilots the real airplane, not a simulated airplane, the real thing.

So and that was a lesson that was born out of, uh, basically out of the lessons that we learned from Vietnam, where we didn't do very well in the air-to-air kill ratio.

And so getting and mapping for the first time without a simulator and without, uh, and probably never having flown a variable geometry wing airplane before and all that, that's gotta be pretty intense.

Right.

And they were just starting to convert to the F-15, and I wasn't gonna be selected to go to the F-15.

And after a rather, uh, humbling experience against an F-5 for the first time, where I just got my fanny smacked, I, uh, an operations officer of mine by the name of Pat O'Brien took me aside and asked me in a hallway of the Tac Fighter S- uh, 12th Tac Fighter Squadron, still remember and picture exactly where it was, he asked me, "What do you wanna do, Z-Man? What do you wanna do in your career?" And that kinda took me off guard.

And, uh, I said, "Well, what do you mean?" And he said, "Do you wanna, you wanna fly air-to-air, or do you wanna haul iron? You wanna be a ground attack guy, or do you wanna be a fighter pilot and shoot MiGs?" I go, "Well, I just got my butt kicked by this Aggressor.

I wanna be that guy and learn how to really get good at air-to-air." And he said, "If you wanna do that, there's only one place for you as an F-4 guy, and that's," you know, and I was a single guy.

Yeah.

And, uh, along the time, about halfway through there, my flight commander, who was an F-15, or F-4 Fighter Weapons School graduate, he pulls me aside, and he says, "Rob-We, uh, myself and the squadron commander, we think you're ready to go to the next level.

And that kind of took me off, off guard 'cause he had never asked me anything like this before.

How was it d- What did you think it was gonna be, and what was it?

Well, you know, I had, I was in brief to the Red Eagle program, Constant Peg program, when I went through aggressor training in the fall of '81.

So I knew about the program.

You know, a couple of guys came in, briefed us on MiG 21, MiG 23, but they never told us how big the unit was.

You know, we knew they had a few airplanes.

How many? I didn't know.

And, uh, where they were at, we vaguely knew where the airfield was, but we never overflew it, even when we went up there and had our one ride.

... dive into that just a little bit.