Over 70 aircraft flown by pilots from six nations have taken part in the UK’s most extensive aerial training exercise.
Exercise Cobra Warrior involved over 70 aircraft engaging in high-intensity, large-scale, simulated complex tactical air warfare operations for three weeks in March.
For the first time, pilots from the Finnish, Indian, and Royal Saudi Air Forces took part in the exercise. The Belgian and US Air Force also participated, having previously joined in past Cobra Warrior exercises.
The Indian Air Force deployed five Mirage 2000 aircraft to RAF Waddington, while the Royal Saudi Air Force operated six Typhoons from RAF Coningsby. Additionally, six F-16s of the Belgian Air Force and six F-18s from the Finnish Air Force were operating from RAF Waddington.
The three-week exercise brought together the capabilities of all nations involved and delivered “the full spectrum of air operations, including defensive and offensive counter-air and strike operations”.
Minister for the Armed Forces, Rt Hon James Heappey MP, said:
“Cobra Warrior is a fantastic opportunity for British pilots to exercise with our international partners, learning from each other and rehearsing operating together, as I’m sure our air forces will do many times over the coming decades.”
Squadron Leader Mcfadden, Commanding Officer of 92 Squadron, said:
“Exercise Cobra Warrior is a challenging Air-led multi-domain exercise, focused on pitting our NATO, Joint Expeditionary Force and International Partners against a capable peer adversary within a challenging and complex environment. It has been a pleasure to host pilots from so many different nations to fly alongside UK pilots and train together in joint-tactics and interoperability.”
You can read a press release from the Ministry of Defence on this here.
Not sure what repeating defence press briefings brings to the table. insight is the key
I wouldn’t know this event was happening if it wasn’t for this article. Insight can be useful but it takes times and adds bias/opinion.
This event has finished already, why George has put this out now is beyond me BAF F16’s went end of week 2 and nothing much flew last Friday. 3 Saudi Hercules have come in today presumably to collect kit and ground crew.
Title should be, “The news that was!” 😁
Some people don’t follow defence press briefings, and I’m happy for there to be more articles rather than fewer. For me insight is a bonus not a necessity.
With bits of HMS Cardiff being wheeled around I’m hoping for some nice videos soon, whether or not they come with insight, just because George’s drone vids are cool.
I don’t have specialist knowledge, so articles like this are helpful to me.
Insight might be useful, but could form the bones of another article.
I cannot see why India is included seeing as they are close training with the Russian Federation. I can only suppose it will help them in passing on the kind of training information to RF.
Suppose we have to trust the MoD know what they are doing. Perhaps we are showing we have the expertise.
Maybe we’re showing the might of NATO for India to feed back to Russia to say you don’t want to mess with these guys
“might of NATO”
NATO is still stuck back in WW2 fighting the Battle of Britain with more modern aircraft. The current war in Ukraine is a missile war and NATO needs to prepare to fight that kind of war. I suspect the Russians are having good laugh.
India & China are long standing deadly foes of each other. So the closer Russia gets to China, the weaker the Indian-Russian link. China also gives a lot of support to Pakistan, even a PLAN base being a possibility. India has sought to be non-aligned since independance, so we all maintain ties & co-operate with them. India is currently a democracy, but also a target by both Russia & China to destabilise towards authoritarism.
Indeed India is the classic example of a nation that is neither in the western or Chinese sphere, but is an extremely important market and economy. We very much want India to always feel comfortable working with the west even if it stays unaligned…
And the BRICS alliance is pulling them closer together economically including, surprisingly, the PRC.
Remember the growth of the EEC was an effort to grow economic cooperation in Europe in part in order to mitigate the re-emergence of military conflict between the parties involved.
My thoughts exactly
This is the difference between NATO and Russian air force. NATO exercises control of 70 aircraft. Vs Russian air force never seemed capable of conducting a strategic air campaign or controlling anything more than 4 aircraft at a time sent to undertake a single mission with no real plan.
Training exercises are key to real world performance
Nah, fighting real wars is the key to real world performance and who is fighting and winning a real war against NATO trained and equipped Ukrainian forces.
no one
Not much experience can be gained from dead soldiers. They can’t really tell anyone what went wrong.
What nato and western forces do is practice every scenario they think could be possible over and over.
Also train with a variety of different forces to learn from each other.
Lessons from Russia’s horror show of an invasion are being learned all the time.
What was it, 17 aircraft they put up against HMS Duncan in the Black Sea in what was a reasonably well coordinated effort. Yes NATO has significant advantages but shouldn’t be complacent.
Although to be fair getting 17 aircraft to fly to the same place on a map, close to your own airbases is not conduction large scale air operations.
If Russia had been serious about HMS Duncan a couple of anti-ship missiles would have converted it to a submarine.
If Russia had been serious about trying to sink HMS Duncan that would of been a declaration of war.
Russian forces would of folded faster than a card tower. Not even Wagner could save them.
It would take more than a couple of anti ship missiles. Those 2 would miss. The next 2 rocket motors wouldn’t fire as someone stole the fuel.
Any after that won’t find targets as some helpful Russians sold the seeker tech to the west.
Only russian ships convert to submarines, ask the survivors of the Moskva. 😂
Russian air operation have moved on from manned aircraft. They rely on missiles and PGMs until they have air supremacy (not air superiority). With PGMs Shahed-136/Geran-2s having a range of 1,900km+ and costing $10,000 each to deliver 150kg of high explosives, why waste millions on F-35s to deliver about 8 times the load for each full stealth mode mission.
That’s working really well for Russia so far. I hear there’s still a playground in Kyiv with an operational slide that needs taken out.
Trying to compare Ukrainian forces to nato forces is just plain silly.
Russia went from the illusion of being the worlds No2 forces to humiliation in a week.
The only folks who still think Russia is some amazing force who’s tech is 30 years ahead of everybody else is Russian fan boys.
Is there any truth in today’s media reports that the 5 Airbus H135 helicopters that the MoD bought to replace the Army’s Gazelle helicopters have been mothballed – without ever having been in the air? Anybody know?
Yes, became aware of that some months ago.
5 Reg AAC probably the next to go to the wall, although it is hardly a regiment now having lost most of its component parts already.
MoD making the usual statements not commenting on what, if anything, replaces the capability.
Thanks Daniele. I believe that the politicians have set up a committee to look into the endless cock-ups and wastage of taxpayers money by the MoD. Doubtless, they will be interested in this one – £33 milllion i gather
I really like George’s reports but he should not use the word massive to discuss the small exercises that we can afford to use now.
Every major air war from Vietnam through the first gulf and Kosovo needed 1000 or more sorties a day.even when the enemy Was outclassed.
In the 90s a typical northern banner exercise used 500 sorties a day.
Calling an exercise with only 70 aircraft massive disguises the sad state of European nato
You do realise that we are not living in the 90s right? Move on…..
Equally, you do realise that 90 is not massive, right?
Eh, David? Believe the 90 referred to the year…
My bad.
I hope that 70 is not recognised as massive.
(Crumbs, I’m getting old).
to be honest it is massive, there are not many airforces that can put 70 operational aircraft together like that ( infact you can count them on 1 hand).
Shall we be honest, a finger would do in this case 😉
Trigger comes to mind.
I asked about fast jets over Grasmere two weeks+ ago.
And Supportive Bloke (?) gave me the heads up.
Was there any GBAD (if we pretended we had some) simulation included in this exercise? It could make a difference.
Nice photo of the F-18 above. Looks the business on the tarmac even when it’s not armed with anything but two Sidewinders!
“the full spectrum of air operations”
Didn’t involve fighting over a battlefield protected by an integrated multi-layer air defence system as exists over eastern Ukraine. If it did most of the 70+ jets involved would have been destroyed.
Don’t you get tired of posting lame Pro Russian bullshit? Oh, stupid question, you get paid for it LOL… 🤣
One potato per comment, if it gets more than 5 replies a bonus turnip is issued.
If it goes viral with over 500 comments it’s a litre of vodka.
The top prize only given out once a year for the most viral, ridiculous post gets a lada.
Oh were you in the ops room observing the completed exercise, so you know exactly what was happening.
What was the point of the exercise? It could be air to air only to allow the forces to practice and learn from each other.
If ground based air defence was to be part of the exercise the U.K. is more than capable of providing this. It could simulations to actual air defence systems.