Blue screens: Air Force 'Virtual Flag' makes up for lost flying hours.

• Author: Jean, Grace
• Position: AIR FORCE TRAINING

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. -- Along the back wall of a dimmed warehouse-size room, four large screen displays cast a blue glow over the F-15E pilots and weapons systems officers sitting inside the jet simulator cockpits. The airmen, from Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina, are preparing to target an airfield and destroy enemy bunkers as part of a full-scale campaign in the Pacific.

Their virtual battle space is teeming with activity. In the air, there are MiG-23 fighters and missiles to dodge, A-10s and other friendly forces to avoid. On the ground there are troops to support and targets to hit. The headsets they wear put them in live communications with controllers and ground forces, some of whom are sitting in the same building while others are scattered across the country in 20 other locations.

As the Air Force's budget continues to be squeezed, the service is mandating a 10 percent reduction in flying hours in an effort to save money. Some officials believe that such training can be done in simulations and honed in digital war games such as Virtual Flag, a five-day exercise held four times annually at the distributed mission operations center here in the Albuquerque desert highlands.

"You're seeing a maturing of Virtual Flag," says Lt. Col. Donald Drechsler, commander of the 705th Combat Training Squadron.

Virtual Flag began in 2000 as a series of war games called Desert Pivot, and has since grown to encompass 645 participants in this latest iteration--the largest exercise yet.

On the main floor of the distributed mission operations center, airmen sit at the controls of numerous simulators, ranging from the RC-135S reconnaissance aircraft and the E-3C Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft to an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. Nearby stand two green shipping container-sized "vans" housing a control reporting cell. Inside, soldiers and members of the Puerto Rican Air National Guard keep constant watch over the air space and coordinate joint fires, ensuring that engaged targets are indeed enemies and not friendly forces. The chatter is fast-paced and wanders occasionally into Spanish.

The military services are not training jointly enough, and this exercise is giving corporals and privates the understanding of how they fit into the whole air defense picture, says Army Lt. Bryan Card, of the Patriot air defense artillery unit with the 31st Brigade at Fort Bliss, Texas.

"The things they do at their level can have tremendous effects on the battlefield," he says.

He and several other Army officers are on site for the air defense artillery fire control officer training, which aids vastly in preventing blue-on-blue engagements such as those that occurred during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, when friendly aircraft were mistakenly shot down, says Maj. Brynt Query, deputy of operations for the 705th Combat Training Squadron at Kirtland.

"By bringing them into these exercises, we can work through the identification issues that still exist. We can work through the mental gymnastics here, so that when we deploy to theater with these very same folks...