Red Flag 11-1 Canceled.

[Joe Copalman]

In case anyone had any plans to hit up Nellis for the next Red Flag at the end of the month, it was canceled,

http://www.nellis.af.mil/library/flyingoperations.asp

[jslugman]

A little context for the cancellation:

<<
Tankers diverted, deflating power of Red Flag

By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Nov 7, 2010 12:13:38 EST

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are keeping tankers too busy to fuel
fighters headed to a Red Flag exercise, so pilots are cooling their heels on
the ground.

Air Force officials canceled Red Flag 11-1 when it became clear the F-16
Fighting Falcons flying from Aviano Air Base, Italy, to Nellis Air Force
Base, Nev., would not get the in-air fueling needed to make the trip.
"Without a strike force, we lost the central focus of a large force
employment exercise and bang-for-the-buck of our training dollar was
minimized," said Todd Parker, deputy chief of the Air Combat Command
Exercise Branch and Red Flag program manager at Joint Base Langely-Eustis,
Va.

Forty aircraft — from F-22 Raptors to C-130J Hercules — were set to
participate in the exercise, scheduled for Oct. 17-30.
The refueling tankers were assigned higher priority missions supporting the
wars, said Capt. James Bressendorff, spokesman for Air Mobility Command at
Scott Air Force Base, Ill.

"Our tankers executed one of the largest swap-outs in our air expeditionary
force history, deploying and redeploying fighter aircraft in support of U.S.
Central Command," Bressendorff said.

Another exercise scheduled for about the same time as Red Flag went on as
planned because it did not depend heavily on tanker support. The Hawgsmoke
air-to-air ground attack competition for A-10 Thunderbolts was Oct. 13-16.
Red Flag exercises are held four to five times a year at Nellis. The mock
air campaigns train aircrews in air-to-air combat, anti-aircraft missile
site attacks, rescue missions and airdrops by simulating the confusion of a
large-scale air battle. As the pilots gain more experience each day, they
fly into more complicated scenarios.

Set to fly in the October Red Flag were: Aviano F-16s, F-22 Raptors from
Langley; E-3 AWACS from Tinker Air Force Base, Okla.; C-130Js from Little
Rock Air Force Base, Ark.; and Navy electronic warfare fighters — EF-18G
Growlers and EA-6B Prowlers — from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Wash.,
and Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

None of the units depended on Red Flag as spin-up training for deployments
to Iraq or Afghanistan, Parker said.

Red Flag organizers are working with the units to schedule them into
upcoming exercises, Parker said. Four Red Flags are set to fly before Sept.
30, with the next exercise scheduled to start Jan. 19.
>>

[Joe Copalman]

Wow. 

Wonder if this will open the door for Omega to add some flying-boom equipped tankers to their fleet.  If you follow them on flightaware, they're seriously flying their 707s every day lately out of Pt. Mugu, so there's no shortage of contract tanker work needed (though on the Navy side, this is obviously a result of eliminating the S-3s and putting more and more of the refueling burden on Super Hornets and shore-based Herks.

[Jay Beckman]

Some more background on the Red Flag cancelation:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htlog/articles/20101112.aspx