USAF Aggressor Squadron paint set vol. 1

The flying opponent

The aggressor squadrons of the US Air Force have a special task. Their machines carry the camouflage of foreign armies, so that the crews of the training unit learn to recognize an opponent at a distance and to judge from the pattern what they are dealing with. The 18th and 64th Aggressor Squadrons therefore repaint their F-16 aircraft into patterns you will meet nowhere else in ordinary service.

Three families of patterns

The arctic pattern rests on the trio of White Grey to FS36628, Dark Gull Grey to FS36231 and Camouflage Black to FS37030. The lizard pattern combines US Army Desert Sand to FS30279, Pale Brown to FS30140, European I Green to FS34092 and Tan to FS20400. The desert and brown variant reaches for the sand and the light brown from the same lineup and appeared on the F-15 machines as well.

• Three shades of the arctic pattern for the machines of both aggressor squadrons
• Four shades of the lizard pattern and of the desert finish
• Aggressor Grey to FS36251 for the radomes and the leading edges of the F-15 machines
• References to the federal standard of shades on all eight items

The lineup is built so that a whole training flight can be put together from it. One and the same gray serves both as the radome of an arctic aircraft and as the leading edge of a heavy twin-engine fighter, so the colors carry over between the patterns and the model does not look like an assembly from several sets.

The patterns of the aggressors also changed over time more quickly than those of line squadrons. One and the same airframe could pass through both the arctic and the lizard finish within a few years, which when building means one thing: the photograph you choose governs not only the layout of the blotches but also which of the four brown and green tones appear on the model at all.