Top Aces

David | February 21, 2026 | 1 Comment

Top Aces is a “private military adversary” company that flies F-16s in exercises against regular Air Force and Navy units. Unlike typical aggressor-adversary units, they are flying highly modified F-16s which can successfully use a lot of the tactics and capabilities of modern 5th generation fighters in 4th-gen F-16 airframes.

Reading the article, many of the upgrades help plane’s interoperability and data sharing.

The addition of Link-16 completes a vision started years ago for an adversary aircraft that truly represents the current 4th-generation-plus fighter threat. Equipped with Top Aces’ open architecture Advanced Aggressor Mission System (AAMS), these aircraft can now replicate the high-end threats that U.S. military pilots may soon face in the Pacific and elsewhere.

The AAMS and the AESA radar, along with the Scorpion helmet and Link-16, have really upped the game in terms of quality adversary support in a crowded adversary air services provider (ADAIR) market. The Scorpion helmet allows the pilot to avoid turning the aircraft’s nose towards the enemy aircraft to target it when employing certain weapons and sensors. This is especially true when employing simulated heat-seeking missile shots. The helmet also displays basic flight and navigational data and can also project objects from the aircraft’s new Link 16 datalink system out into the visual space all around the aircraft. In other words, if a friendly is 30 miles away at 10 o’clock high, it can shoot that in augmented reality to the pilot.

Top Aces is also using the Air Force’s AN/ALQ-188 jamming pod. The AN/ALQ-188 is a common sight at U.S. air combat exercises and can simulate certain types of hostile electronic countermeasures systems. Top Aces F-16s have controls inside their aircraft that allow the pilots to scale the electronic attack to whatever the blue air wants, whether it be just a nuisance or a full scale ‘melt your face off’ EW attack.

Bear in mind that these are some of the fastest-maneuvering aircraft in the world – one related article says an F16A can do a U-turn in 2000 feet, whereas most other jets may take a mile. Couple all of that with some of the science-fiction capabilities, and you have pretty impressive “red air” (aggressor) planes to oppose the “blue air” (defenders.)

“Datalink, from a very basic standpoint, is when you can look at the picture in your jet and immediately see what everyone’s doing and where they are; you don’t have to be looking outside necessarily to do that. In fact, I would really prefer my wingman to be like miles away from me because we’re probably not gonna hit each other if he’s miles away from me, and I don’t have to worry about him as much. I can just look at my screen, and I know where my wingman is, and what he’s doing. I can see that he’s targeting something because I can see data being passed between our airplanes, which is really helpful to know, not only within our own airplanes but also with the joint force airplanes.

Then there is the deceptive part.

Belle explained, “When the blue air looks at us, no longer do they see just one contact. They may now see two or three contacts and that is just complicating the training and driving better outcomes for their learning. The pilot pushes a few buttons to place an aircraft on my right at two miles and one on my left at two miles. I have a series of 10 commands that I can give it. I can tell it to go 50 miles from blue air and then reform behind me at 20 miles. Or better yet, I am going to turn around as the live fighter and these two contacts will continue going so blue air now thinks he has a bigger problem. But really, he/she is concentrating on synthetic tracks.” TWZ

Sounds like a private company providing state-of-the-art training to our guys. Kinda have to wonder whether a few squadrons of F-16s equipped like theirs could give us – 5th gen capabilities without the typical 5th gen (read: expensive F22/F35) costs?

LONG article and takes a couple of reads to absorb – but interesting reading.