Draken contract until 2023 at Nellis

Draken International, Lakeland, Florida, has been awarded a $280,000,000 indefinite-quantity contract for adversary air aggressor services. ADAIR services provides tactical fighter jet aircraft flight operations flown by contractor-owned, contractor-operated aircraft simulating non-western aggressor air for the 57th Adversary Tactics Group. The contractor will furnish, operate, equip, support and maintain tactically-relevant aircraft for air-to-air tracking, targeting, and ADAIR operations. Aggressor sorties are generated by COCO flight operations, to provide combat air training services that include tactical profiles, to include beyond-visual-range engagements, operational test support, dissimilar air combat maneuvers, offensive and defensive within-visual-range maneuvers, multi-ship tactics, merges, and flight. ADAIR sorties will integrate as part of the Air Force aggressor force in support of ADAIR requirements. Work will be performed at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and is expected to be complete by December 2023. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition, and two offers were received. Fiscal 2018 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $10,000,000 are being obligated at the time of award. The 99th Contracting Squadron, Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, is the contracting activity (FA4861-18-D-C002).

Wow, 280million over five years. You have to wonder what the old aggressors cost.

a reply to: gariac

Insurance costs are a bunch of that. Plus normal operations costs for a fleet of multiple types. They're the only ones flying multiple types of supersonic aircraft with radar for AdAir that I'm aware of. They're also flying out of Luke on that same contract, I believe. Maybe others, too, so the price probably increases with a larger footprint.


ETA: just looked at the RFP. Needed a turnaround time of 2.5-3 hours on sorties, 14 aircraft minimum, 8 always available, equipped with foreign-built AESA, supersonic, inst and sustained turn requirements, 40,000 flight hours contracted, etc, etc. Not going to be cheap.

a reply to: gariac

This is the first long term contract.

a reply to: RadioRobert

The ADAIR program is going to eventually put almost all the Red Air under commercial control. They've been buying every type of aircraft they can get their hands on to try to get as much of it as they can.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I didn't look at the math, but I don't think their MiG-21's would hack it even. Looks like the Cheetah and Mirage F.1 are going to be the types used under this particular contract.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Draken has A-4s, Cheetahs, F.1s, and L-159s. Other companies have bought F-16s and F-5s, as well as having Kfirs and others. The A-4s and L-159s are usually seen at Nellis under their current contracts.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Draken has a couple dozen ex-Polish MiG-21's.

a reply to: RadioRobert

Yeah, but they're fairly useless for most of their Red Air stuff.

a reply to: RadioRobert

This is certainly no simple task. I guessing it is cheaper than when the DoD had the mission, plus it frees up pilots for other duties.

The claim was "Firepower" was a million, and that was a day.

Personally I'm surprised any commercial outfit could meet the mission. This is a lot more than rent-a-bogie.

a reply to: gariac

Frees up pilots and juat as important lessens hard hours on those airframes. Navy had that problem with the F-16N's remember? They racked up so many hard hours that fatigue began a major issue. Why add a unique type to the logistics train, have to train those personnel on maintenance and ops, or put those hours on an existing airframe that can be put to better use elsewhere? Cheaper to outsource it, I'm sure.

a reply to: gariac

The last few years, ever since they announced that they were looking at commercial Red Air the companies that do the mission have been modernizing everything from the aircraft, to their ground operations as fast as they could. Countries that were replacing or retiring aircraft couldn't get them ready to sell fast enough.