On 22 September a grey-camouflaged Cacciatore di Hawker lost engine thrust and went into the Pacific off Morro Bay, California. The pilot ejected and was rescued. The jet was not flying for any air force. It belonged to ATAC, a private company paid to play the enemy.

That is a bigger business than most people realise. Every time NATO pilots train for air combat, someone has to fly the other side, and more and more often that someone is a contractor in a former military jet. Three companies dominate the field: Top Aces, Draken International and ATAC. Here is who they are, what they fly and why air forces hire them.

Why Air Forces Rent an Enemy

Good training needs a good opponent. Air forces have long kept their own "aggressor" squadrons for this, flying their fighters in enemy tactics and enemy-style paint. But aggressors are expensive, and every jet flying Red Air is a jet not doing a real mission.

IL US Air Force hit that wall in the 2010s. When the F-15-equipped 65th Aggressor Squadron shut down in 2014, only the 64th Aggressor Squadron at Base aerea di Nellis and the 18th at Eielson Air Force Base were left, both flying F-16s. Frontline squadrons had to send their own jets to fly as the enemy. In June 2015 the service tried something different: four Air National Guard F-16 units trained against A-4K Skyhawks flown by a contractor.

In October 2019 the Air Force went all in, splitting a Combat Air Forces Contracted Air Support contract worth up to $6.4 billion between seven companies. Contractors now fly Red Air at bases across the United States, freeing the military's own fighters and pilots for operational flying.

Draken International: The Biggest Private Air Force

Draken was founded in January 2012 by Jared Isaacman at Lakeland Linder International Airport in Florida. With roughly 150 jets, it claims the largest privately owned fleet of former military tactical aircraft in the world. Its 2021 fleet list read like a Cold War museum that still flies: A-4K Skyhawks, Aero L-159 light fighters, Dassault Mirage F1s, MiG-21bis and Atlas Cheetahs.

Draken works alongside the 64th Aggressor Squadron at Nellis, and in June 2018 the Pentagon announced a $280 million contract for it to keep supporting the 57th Adversary Tactics Group there and at Luke and Hill. Blackstone bought the company in 2020. The work carries real risk: in May 2021 a Draken Mirage F1 crashed near Nellis, killing its pilot. A plan to buy up to 24 F-16s from the Netherlands and Norway was later cancelled, with those jets going to Ukraine and Romania instead.

A documentary on Draken International and its fleet of former military jets. Video: Skynine, LLC

Top Aces: From Alpha Jets to F-16s

Top Aces was founded in Montreal in 2000 by three former Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 pilots. It provides Red Air, electronic warfare and other training services to Canada and, since 2014, to the German Air Force, with permanent bases in Canada, the US and Germany. Its fleet started with Alpha Jets and upgraded A-4N Skyhawks.

Then Top Aces did what no private company had done: it bought frontline-class fighters. It agreed to buy early-model F-16As from the Israeli Air Force, flew the first one in Mesa, Arizona, on 18 May 2021, and began flying them for the USAF in 2022. In 2024 the Canadian government contracted Top Aces to help train Ukrainian F-16 pilots.

The first flight of a Top Aces F-16 in Mesa, Arizona, 18 May 2021. Video: Top Aces

ATAC: Hunters, Kfirs and a Swiss Connection

The Airborne Tactical Advantage Company, ATAC, is based in Newport News, Virginia, and flies mainly from Naval Air Station Point Mugu in California, supporting the US Navy, US Air Force and Air National Guard. Textron bought it in 2016. Its fleet has included Hawker Hunters, IAI Kfirs, A-4 Skyhawks, L-39s and a large number of Mirage F1s.

Some of those Hunters have a MiGFlug-friendly history. The jet below, N322AX, began life in the Swiss Air Force as J-4087 before crossing the Atlantic to play the enemy for American pilots.

La presa

Contract adversaries are cheaper than using frontline fighters, but they are not a perfect stand-in. Most of their jets are older and slower than the threats they are meant to represent, which is why the move to F-16s matters so much. And flying ageing, single-engine jets hard every day carries risk, as the Hunter lost off California in September showed. Still, the model has gone from experiment to standard practice in a decade. The next time you see a Skyhawk or a Mirage F1 in an exercise photo, there is a good chance it is a contractor on the other side.

How Draken International became an "air force for rent". Video: WarFronts

Sources: Air & Space Forces Magazine ("Red Air for Hire", February 2018; "Seven Companies Split Adversary Training Contract Worth up to $6.4B", 2019); Wikipedia (Top Aces; Draken International; Airborne Tactical Advantage Company); Top Aces; KSBY News.