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The Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center resides just outside the small desert town of Fallon in northern Nevada, about an hour’s drive northeast of Reno on Highway 50. To find Naval Air Station Fallon, which hosts NSAWC (pronounced N-sock), first-time visitors should look to the sky and head to the source of F-14 Tomcats, F-18 Hornets, EA-6B Prowlers, and other Navy aircraft. The unpretentious main gate is easy to miss. Fortunately, the light traffic makes backtracking a minor inconvenience.

These surroundings are a far cry from NAS Miramar, where missing an exit can mean a thirty-minute unplanned tour of the western suburbs of San Diego. Such a comparison seems unavoidable since Fallon is now home for the Navy’s Top Gun School, which is part of NSAWC. Yes, some of those fighters in the desert skies are piloted by today’s versions of Tom Cruise.

Base realignment and closure decisions brought Top Gun, more formally called Navy Fighter Weapons School, to Fallon in 1996. The heralded organization joined the less glamorized Naval Strike Warfare Center (formerly called Strike U), which had been at Fallon since 1984. Carrier Airborne Early Warning Weapons School (called Top Dome) accompanied Top Gun from Miramar to Fallon in 1996. These moves consolidated the various Naval air training organizations on the west coast into one central location and under one command.

"With the stroke of a pen, we took three strong legacies and organizations and turned them into one," explains Capt. John Worthington, the deputy commander of NSAWC. "The transition was difficult at first, but the organization has come together beautifully. As the primary authority on training, we can make sure everyone is teaching what we want them to teach."

NSAWC is now designated as the premiere aviation center of excellence and the primary authority on training and tactics development for the US Navy. This designation carries an assortment of responsibilities. NSAWC personnel train pilots and ground personnel, assess the results of that training, and recommend requirements for future training programs. They research and develop priorities for integrated strike warfare, maritime and land air superiority, strike fighter employment, airborne battle management, combat search and rescue, close air support, and associated planning and support systems. They also develop, implement, and administer several courses of instruction and function as the Navy point of contact for all issues relating to the force’s air combat training curriculum. The 10,200-square-mile training range near Fallon also comes under the control of NSAWC.

The center is split into nine divisions: personnel resources; intelligence; operations, maintenance; plans and programs; command control, communications, computers, and intelligence; training and standardization; and ranges. The training and standardization division includes Top Gun training as well as carrier air wing training. The latter was formerly provided by Strike U. The maintenance division takes care of about thirty-five fighter aircraft, including F-18A/B Hornets and F-14A Tomcats, as well as four SH-60F helicopters. About 130 officers, 250 enlisted personnel, and 500 contractors support operations at NSAWC.

Top Gun training, still widely perceived as addressing air-to-air tactics only, changed in the early 1990s to include air-to-ground tactics. The ten-week course now graduates strike fighter tactics instructors, who usually return to fighter squadrons to train their fellow aircrews in air-to-air and air-to-ground tactics. Marine pilots take a five-week course that covers air-to-air tactics only. Students for the course are selected from the most highly rated aircrews who have finished their first fleet tour and have accumulated about 1,000 hours of flight time. Top Gun instructors at NSAWC conduct about five of these courses every year. The coursework begins with a week of academics and builds from one vs. one air combat, to small strike packages against unknown threats, to large strike packages that involve all the students and all of the instructors.

Top Gun instructors also teach a six-week adversary course for other NSAWC instructor pilots. NSAWC pilots themselves fly F-18s to represent fourth-generation threats. These adversaries are often supported by the "Fighting Saints" of Fighter Squadron Composite 13, or VFC-13, a Navy Reserve Unit at Fallon that flies F-5E/F aircraft to represent third-generation aerial threats.

Four or more times a year, a carrier air wing comes to Fallon for carrier air wing training, a three and one-half week course that prepares the wing for its first deployment as a fighting unit. These visits bring seventy to eighty aircraft and about 2,100 people to the base. Carrier air wing training is conducted mostly by a separate group of NSAWC instructor pilots, all Top Gun graduates.

"Many times Top Gun training overlaps air wing training," Worthington says, "so scheduling becomes more complicated. These periods of overlapping instruction and the high workload place a heavy demand on our ranges, which are scheduled at a higher rate than any other military range in the country."

Carrier air wing training is an integral part of the Navy’s continuous cycles of fielding carrier battle groups. The Navy has twelve aircraft carriers. One carrier is always involved in training, and another is always undergoing refurbishment. Carrier air wings operate from the remaining ten. The squadrons that come together to form an air wing are located up and down the east and west coasts of the United States. Every air wing is made up of eight or nine of these squadrons, four or five of which are fighter squadrons. (Some air wings have two F-14 squadrons and two F-18 squadrons; others have two F-14 squadrons and three F-18 squadrons.) Nine of the ten air wings are required to come through Fallon six months before deploying. The air wing based in Japan is the lone exception for budgetary reasons.

“Fallon is the first place that an air wing commander has everyone in one place at one time,” Worthington explains. “Before they come here, a commander will work with individual squadrons at their specific bases. The squadron may go to an assigned ship for short periods of time as well. Ship personnel are going through similar retraining processes.”

Carrier air wing training progresses through three phases of flying. The first phase, called mission-level training, involves different types of aircraft from various squadrons combined in one element. The elements focus on a single mission type, such as reconnaissance, attack, search and rescue, and suppression of enemy air defenses. This phase lasts about three days and constitutes about thirty total elements. The second phase, called integrated training, combines several of these elements in eleven separate scenarios that increase in complexity over the next week. The third phase, called advanced training, strings several missions together over a dynamic three-day campaign.

Both Top Gun and carrier air wing training have adopted the latest technologies into their curricula. The courses address the latest in weapons, including the joint standoff weapon. Unmanned reconnaissance vehicles, realtime digital reconnaissance with the F-14 TARPS pod, night-vision goggles, and high-speed datalinks are being used as well. The breadth of these courses may be expanding soon as more Naval aircraft incorporate weapons. "All the Navy platforms, including P-3 Orions and our helicopters, are getting forward-firing ordnance," Worthington notes. "We have not had weapon schools for these aircraft in the past. However, NSAWC is taking the lead on this training for all of the platforms. So we are looking beyond the F-14 and F-18 communities."

NSAWC will take on these new challenges as it continues to polish the combat capability of Navy and Marine aviators. The newly streamlined organization is backed up by a handpicked staff, excellent facilities, and an unsurpassed training range. NSAWC is well-equipped to maintain its status as a center of excellence for Naval training.

Eric Hehs