This Indian Air Force Training School is as Good as US Top Gun School

This Indian Air Force Training School is as Good as US Top Gun School


Indian Air Force nor the Indian Naval Avaition have dogfight training school like Top Gun school of US Navy which is officially known as United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program.

Instead IAF has T.A.C.D.E which stands for Tactics and Air Combat Development Establishment which is similar to the US Navy’s Top Gun school.

T.A.C.D.E was established in February 1971 and later saw changes after the Indo-Pak war of 1971.

In the top gun school selected naval aviators from different fighter squadrons of US Navy are taught fighter and strike tactics and after training they return to their units and squadrons as ‘surrogate instructors’.

In the Top Gun school instructors copy and demonstrate tactics of possible enemy fighter aircrafts and forces with their own aircrafts flying as the adversary for trainee pilots in mock combat missions. So, that their pilots can have experience of how will that ‘possible enemy force’ behave during real combat and prepare for real combat accordingly.

But this doesn’t mean that our Indian pilots lag training, tactics or dogfight skills. Other than T.A.C.D.E, Indian fighter pilots also get combat training exposure through multi-national training exercises like IAF participates in ‘RED FLAG’ hosted by US Air Force, ‘Garuda’ exercise between French and Indian Air Force, ‘Indradhanush’ air exercise between Royal Air Force and IAF, ‘Indra’ exercise with Russia, etc. The experience which pilots get from these exercises is then put to use in training and courses by T.A.C.D.E for pilots.

Indian Naval pilots also get combat training exposure through multi-national exercises like ‘Malabar’ exercise with US Navy, ‘Varuna 2015′ with French Navy when French carrier Charles De Gaulle also participated in the exercise of 2015.

Our pilots get quality training at home and they don’t always depend on exercise with foreign nations but these exercises do help our pilots to learn new tactics and skills.

The answer was written by Rohan on Quora on response to a question.
 
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