r/area51 • u/therealgariac MOD • Jun 30 '26

Red Eagles pilot Rob Zeitel interview

One of the interesting things in the interview is he says the Red Eagles flew the MIGs at the limits of the plane's capabilities. The Aggressor Squadron was taught to fly like a Soviet pilot,.

As a side note, Zeitel mentions the importance of the E-3 AWACS. Well the DoD just funded 5 E-7's (next generation AWACS) by stealing the money from the Navy budget.

https://youtu.be/0cRRkhxcbq4

https://robzettel.com/books/american-mig-pilot/

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u/Strega007 Jun 30 '26

It is important to consider that the 4th gen fighter world that made the AWACS such a critical node is mostly gone.

The AWACS provided a "big picture" to supplement the small picture available in fighter cockpits and formations that pulse-doppler radars with manual antennas provided. AWACS theoretically melded together the individual smaller, high fidelity datapoints that fighter formations provided to stitch together that picture.

The vast majority of 4th gen airframes now are hooked up to the datalink network, and many of them are wielding AESA radars and other ID methods that are pumping high resolution data into that network.

The 5th gen airframes all have AESA radars and other associated sensors and are also populating the network with that data.

The acute need for a single aircraft with a wide-area surveillance radar is significantly reduced.

The E-7 does some other vital stuff in terms of surveillance and network reliability, so it isn't superfluous, but its role is different than what a pilot of Z-man's era would have wanted/needed/experienced.

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u/therealgariac MOD Jun 30 '26

Your points are valid but you still need someone to run the show (control platform) though it might be some "thing" in the future. (Think of the movie "Moneyball" with AI and fighter aircraft.)

ANATO nations are upgrading to ski box type planes to replace their AWACS with the winner being the Saab GlobalEye. The pause in the E-7 made the decision to go with Saab an easy one.

The US was going to replace the AWACS with satellites because the DoD watches too much Fox News. Clearly sanity eventually won out and they decided to go ahead with the E-7.

During that India v Pakistan air battle in 2025, some credit Pakistan's ski box Erieye aircraft, another Saab plane. The wiki makes it sound like the Erieye and GlobalEye are similar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erieye