But someone must have forgotten to explain all this to the 119th Fighter Group. Last October, this ANG unit from North Dakota flew down to Tyndall in Florida with its air-defense F-16s and flew back with all the marbles and major bragging rights that go along with top prize at William Tell. In fact, the Happy Hooligans of the 119th and the Green Mountain Boys of the 158th Fighter Group of Burlington, Vermont, (the only other F-16 unit competing) finished ahead of all five competing F-15 teams. These results are making it much harder for F-16 proponents to hold back when talking air superiority.

"The F-15 is the beyond visual range airplane," said Lt. Col. Tom Larson, the operations group commander and project officer for Fargo's William Tell team. "The F-15 was built for BVR. It definitely has a lot of advantages with radar missiles. But this win proves what F-16 pilots have known all along: the F-16 is as good as any other aircraft in air superiority."

Col. Michael Haugen, commander of the 119th, will readily admit that he was elated but not all that surprised by the win. "We said from the beginning that we were going down there for one purpose," he explained. "We did not go down there to show that the F-16 could compete. We went to win." Haugen and others at Fargo credit preparation most for their success. "We read the rules carefully to see how to maximize our scores," Haugen continued. "We talked about what we were going to do. We laid out a game plan. And we executed it once we got down there."

"When a video crew asked us if they could tape one of our preflight briefings during the competition," recounted Maj. Bob Edlund, Fargo's team captain for William Tell, "I told them we don't brief. They thought I was joking. But apart from what we were required to discuss before the flights, we didn't. We had practiced what we were going to do so many times there was no need to talk about it."

William Tell is the US Air Force's foremost air-to-air competition. The biennial event, which began in 1954, tests all phases of air defense and air superiority in realistic air-to-air environments. The eight teams competing in 1994 came from the 9th Air Force (F-15C teams from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley AFB, Virginia, and the 33rd Fighter Wing at Eglin AFB, Florida), US Air Forces Europe (an F-15C team from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem AB, Germany), Pacific Air Forces (an F-15C team from the 18th Fighter Wing at Kadena AB, Japan-winners of the two previous William Tells), the Air National Guard (F-16As from North Dakota, F-16Cs from Vermont, and an F-15A team from the 122nd Fighter Squadron at New Orleans, Louisiana), and the Canadian Air Forces Air Command (a CF-18 team from the 425th and the 433rd Fighter Squadrons at Bagotville CFB, Quebec).

The competition consisted of four flying events, called profiles, and two weapon loading events-a static load and an integrated combat turn (a timed event in which five team members return an arriving aircraft to full combat status as quickly as possible). Maintenance was judged throughout the competition. The performance of ground-based radar controllers (also called weapon directors) in guiding competing aircraft to their air targets was scored as well in three of the four profiles.

Every team brought five aircraft and five pilots. The fifth was a backup or spare. In three of the profiles, pilots flew part of a two-aircraft element (one lead and one wingman). All four aircraft flew simultaneously in the remaining profile. Teams worked with the same radar controllers throughout the competition. Training for the competition was limited to sixty days before the event and a maximum thirty flying days for every pilot. Teams could bring a maximum of ten people with previous William Tell experience.

In Profile I, each two-aircraft element of every team faced two MQM-107D subscale drones flying threat tactics. The lead aircraft of the element fired a live radar missile, either an AIM-7 Sparrow or an AIM-120 AMRAAM, at one drone and the wingman fired a live AIM-9 Sidewinder at the other. Instead of warheads, all missiles carried telemetry transmitters for scoring the shots. Pilots were scored on miss distances and on the time it took to shoot down the drones.

Profile II was a gun attack against an AGTS-36 aerial gunnery target towed by an F-15. In this profile, one pilot tried to get a fast, high-angle shot at the target in less than fifty-five seconds from the initial pass, or merge. Bonus points were awarded for scoring in less than twenty-five seconds. At the same time, the other pilot tried to track the target as long as possible and hit it as many times as possible during the fifty five seconds following the merge. The pilots reversed roles for a second pass at the target. No weapons director competition was held in conjunction with this profile.

In Profile III, all four of a team's aircraft had to defend an area against a mass raid of sixteen attackers that included B-1s, B-52s, QF-106s, QF-4s, LearJets, and Canadian Challenger aircraft. Among these attacking aircraft was one F-15 friendly, which the team had to identify and not shoot down. Each team and its associated weapon directors had to detect, identify as hostile, and engage all sixteen bomber threats within a forty-five-minute vulnerability period.

In Profile IV, two-aircraft elements faced four manned QF-106s (these aircraft can also be flown from the ground) flying scripted maneuvers. The profile began with a scramble start. The objective was to detect, sort, and engage the four adversaries and shoot them down within five minutes. This was probably the most dynamic-and, therefore, the most difficult-profile of the four. Results from Profile IV were kept secret until the awards ceremony.

Flying scores from the four profiles were combined with scores from maintenance, weapon loading events, and radar controllers to determine the top team. Flying represented sixty percent of available points; weapons director, twenty percent; maintenance, ten percent; and weapon loading, ten percent. Awards were also given for the first-place finishers of each profile (profile awards included operational, maintenance, and radar controller scores), top operations team (the aircrew team that accumulated the most points in the four profiles), top element (lead and wingman who accumulated the most points in the four profiles), top maintenance team, top weapon loading team, top weapons director team, and top scope (controller within a weapons director team who accumulated the most points).

As it turned out, Fargo's performance in Profile IV put them over the top for the win. Even though the QF-106s flew the same threat tactics against all the teams, Fargo fielded the only team to have both of its elements shoot down all four QF-106 threats. Being the only unit to achieve eight hits out of eight shots equated to about 2,600 points (out of a possible 14,500) between first and second place in the profile. Fargo's second element, piloted by Maj. Robert Becklund and Maj. George Lambirth, shot all four targets before the merge, in less than four minutes into the encounter.

"We could not have done it any quicker," explained Becklund, who, perhaps not so coincidentally, was in charge of training his team for Profile IV. "We practiced for the worst-case scenario," Becklund continued. "We assumed one bandit in every altitude block from the surface to the 45,000 feet. [The upper altitude limit was 50,000 feet.] I don't think the other units practiced that way."

"No other team came down as high and as fast as we did in Profile IV," added Edlund, whose element killed all four targets in just over four minutes. "We came down from about 30,000 feet and flew the maximum speed for the missile. We came down high and fast so we would have time to sort and kill anyone we missed before the merge. We left the engine at maximum afterburner until we hit the merge. That was the best way to approach the profile."

These tactics came from a careful study of the rules and group discussions on what to expect as a worst-case scenario in each profile. "We knew there were going to be four targets, but that was about all we knew," explained Haugen. "So we asked ourselves what can they do to screw us up the most. Everyone said that they can go to the beam and thereby disappear on the radar.

"Well, it turns out that the QF-106s came in fast and went to the beam, which made them invisible for a while," Haugen continued. "The targets came in as a four-ship cell real fast. Then one went straight up, one went straight down, and the other two went straight left and right. It was like a bomb burst. So the next time you saw them on the radar, one was at 50,000 feet, one at 1,000 feet, and the other two at medium altitude and separated by sixteen miles. And they were all going straight at you at twice the speed of sound, as fast as or faster than you could go. Now you had only a few minutes to kill all four. That's difficult to do with four targets coming at you at Mach 2 and separated by a bunch of airspace. You can't catch them unless you've figured out how to deploy your force to start with.

"We had to come in high enough and fast enough to shoot the first two with a radar missile and then go after the other two using altitude and speed to our advantage. You can't kill them all if you're not prepared for this maneuver. We had the scenario pegged because we suspected that they might use the beam action to screw up all the Doppler radars. Here's where experience comes into play. We have several people who have seen and used that maneuver to defeat radars before. We looked for the worst-case scenario and we trained for it. We had the airspace at home to practice that profile, too."

"When we trained for Profile IV, we had good days when we'd go out and smack all four guys and we'd have bad days when we'd get only two," said Edlund. "To be honest, we could have gone out the next day and hit only three. There is a little luck involved. We played the scenario well and we prepared well. I was quite surprised that at least two F-15 units and the Burlington F-16 unit did not get all four."

"I've been to six William Tells," Larson said. "In every one, some units did some things better and some things worse. That happens in every competition. Everyone, including us, could have done better. We could have done better in the Profile II, the gun profile. We also got credit for only fourteen of the sixteen targets in Profile III. We shot all sixteen but two were a mile past the BRL [bomb release line-a range limit in Profile III] after the judges took out their micrometers and measured everything. But every team has a story like that."

Add to Fargo's perfect performance in Profile IV solid finishes in the three other profiles as well as near-perfect scores for the weapon loading team, maintenance, and radar controllers and you have some idea why this ANG team beat the best of the active Air Force.

"We never had a plane break," said Edlund. "We never missed one takeoff time. We didn't have to use a spare. And every missile came off the rail just like it was supposed to. That means maintenance personnel, weapon loaders, and the other specialists did everything perfectly.

"We also had phenomenal radar controllers," Edlund continued. "We listened to our controllers and we trusted them. We worked with them hard. One of the people watching the ACMI screen during our Profile IV said the difference between our team and others was that we listened to the radar controllers and let them build the big picture." (ACMI, or air combat maneuvering instrumentation, is an electronic means for viewing air engagements on the ground.)

"Working well with ground controllers is a habit we've developed because of our radar limitations," Edlund added. 'We don't blow off the ground controllers. We're used to listening to them to get situational awareness outside of our radar coverage." As proof of Edlund's accolades for his radar controllers, Fargo's controllers, from McChord AFB, Washington, finished second in both controller categories of the competition. Burlington's controllers finished first.

"Of course, you have to give the airplane a lot of credit," Haugen said. "We didn't have any problems. The airplane worked fine. This wasn't a major surge, though. You're flying the airplane only four times during the actual competition. The preparation you do for the competition will determine how well you will do. The maintenance that leads up to it is much more important than the maintenance you do down there. Our exceptionally long lock-on ranges, for example, can be credited to the work we did in advance of the competition."

The performance of Fargo's APG-66 radars was probably one of the biggest technical surprises of the competition and a tribute to the entire unit. "Our APG-66 radar is underrated," Haugen said. "If maintained really well, it will surprise you. Our maintenance guys really worked on the radar. They studied it and talked to representatives from Raytheon, Hughes, Westinghouse, and Lockheed. I think we even surprised some engineers with the contact ranges we were getting."

MSgt. Darrell Nordick, the avionics flight line supervisor for Fargo's team, said the exceptional radar performance was the result of better communication between the pilots and the avionics shop and a little more attention to detail. "We always keep the airplanes in top condition," said Nordick. "We didn't do that much statistical tracking of avionic performance for the competition. We don't have the assets to throw away antennas or to trade for other ones. Our avionics shop just set its standards a little higher. For instance, we used transmitters with the maximum output and the best antennas. The long ranges we saw down there were the result of eliminating a lot of small things." The 119th is now incorporating some of these procedures into their regular operations.

Another likely factor in Fargo's win was a two-week deployment to a National Guard training site in Savannah, Georgia, a month before the competition. In Georgia, Fargo practiced for William Tell with the teams from Burlington and Canada. These three teams took the top three places. Whatever we did down there, we did it right," said Edlund.

"Some teams flew at least twice as many training sorties as we did," continued Edlund. "But that can work against you, too. I think we had the right mix. When we got back from our two-week deployment to Georgia the week before we went to Tyndall, our pilots flew only one or two sorties. We didn't want to peak early. We wanted to peak down there. You can get burned out."

Aside from being a little slower than his younger competitors in the seventy-five-yard scramble to the aircraft in Profile IV, Edlund said the part-time nature of the ANG was more than offset by years of experience. "Their best guys have five years of experience," Edlund said. "Our best have twenty-five doing the same thing. Every pilot we sent had at least 1,000 hours in the F-16. All were flight leads and two were instructor pilots."

Any built-in disadvantages for the ANG in the competition were probably misperceptions. "Historically, we may have had fewer deployments and less training in dissimilar air combat," Larson said, "but that situation has changed as the demands on the Guard have increased. We now go to all the exercises. Last October, we went to Hawaii to support the B-1 bomber weapon school. In February, we went to Red Flag. Last May, we went to Maple Flag. And we went to WSEP in July." (WSEP, or weapon system evaluation program, is live-fire testing of operational weapon systems conducted at Tyndall.)

"I've been to WSEPs for the last four years," said Edlund. "I've shot five missiles. Most guys in the active force get to shoot zip. So our limited experience with live missiles is probably a misperception, too. But that's what we like them to think about us. We've already shot a bunch of AIM-7s. We shot hundreds of them when our unit flew F-4 Phantoms."

"Firing missiles is just like dropping bombs-experience really counts," added Becklund, who fired his first AIM-120 at William Tell. "Firing a live missile gets rid of the butterflies. You actually see it coming off the rail. You learn range procedures. A WSEP teaches you how not to get target-fixated, how to perform a breakaway maneuver instead of air scoring a shot. AIM-120 experience would certainly help, but having previous BVR missile experience is also useful."

That "part-time" perception of the Air National Guard is something that the 119th's commander would like to see put to rest. "This concept of the ANG member as strictly a 'weekend warrior' is totally erroneous," Haugen said. "We have been deployed in eleven of the last twelve months. The competition in itself took a lot of effort. But at the same time, we were maintaining an air-defense alert at March AFB in California. We also were in the middle of a forty-five-day deployment to Puerto Rico. Our plate was full. And we're in the air sovereignty mission-we're supposed to stay at home. What we may lack in a daily training schedule, we make up for in a higher experience level. We have a big pool of talent and experience. We may not get as many sorties during the week, but we have another whole career to draw on.

"Everybody is looking for something to use to support their branch of the services during these tight budgetary times," continued Haugen. "Performances like this are becoming real important. Winning William Tell gives the Guard leadership something to point to when anyone starts talking about how the Guard can't compete or refers to us as a subforce. No one can say that we are not as good as the active Air Force when it comes to putting rubber to the road."

And after William Tell 1994, no one can point to the F-16 as a less capable air-to-air fighter.