Military Jets Photography: 2013 04 18 Frisian Flag at EHLW

The Frisian Flag exercise started in 1992 and the format changed and increased every year. Since 1998 the massive involvement of foreign aircraft made it a Flag exercise. A small version of the well known Red Flag in the USA or Maple Flag in Canada exercises. Throughout the years the number of participants and their origins varied.
The objective of Frisian Flag is an offensive and defensive training in a realistic scenario, with emphasis on tactical decisions and the effective integration of all available asset and systems. The Frisian Flag is an exercise by pilots and for pilots, all pilots bring in their wishes and demands for the scenarios. There is no high-level command center that defines the missions, all missions are created and implemented at Leeuwarden by the participating pilots. The demands for the missions are gathered by the Frisian Flag staff and the specified missions are assigned to the daily mission commanders whereby every pilot will have a role as mission commander once during the exercise. Two missions are flown every day, during daylight time only. As the mission preparations take a lot of time, there are double aircrews present at Leeuwarden; when the morning missions are flown, the afternoon missions are prepared and briefed. With a total of around 50 aircraft flying twice a day, 80% of the aircraft will fly in the ‘blue forces’ during a mission, while the other 20% will fly in the opposing ‘red forces’. There are no predefined roles for the pilots, one day they fly defensive in the ‘blue forces’, the other day they can fly offensive missions in the ‘red forces’. After each mission a debriefing takes place, whereby the learned lessons will be incorporated into the future missions, There are no restrictions on the capacities and skills of the participating pilots, each country may decide on the skill level of the pilots and on their objectives for the exercise.