UAE's top guns spread their wings

A documentary set to air tonight follows UAE fighter pilots on their first time participating in the US-hosted Red Flag aerial war games.

Desert Falcons, a documentary, follows 140 fighter pilots and maintenance staff during the Red Flag games.

ABU DHABI // The Emirati fighter jets locate their target, lock on, drop their payloads and wait for the blast, which doesn't come. The dramatic scene is not from actual combat, but from a new documentary called Desert Falcons that follows 140 fighter pilots and maintenance staff during two weeks of aerial combat games called Red Flag held in Nevada last year.

While there is no pouting Tom Cruise playing Maverick, the film, which premiered to hundreds of military men in the auditorium of the Emirates Palace hotel last night, is the UAE's own version of Top Gun. It shows the pilots being put through their paces, and makes for an impressive display of UAE aerial firepower. The exercises are designed to train pilots from the US and its allies - "the elite of the elite" - in realistic war scenarios, including dogfights and bombing exercises. Fewer than 30 countries have been invited to Red Flag.

"Red Flag is about gaining experience and meeting pilots of different nationalities and learning new combat skills and ways to strength and improve our Air Force," Capt Saeed al Zaabi of the UAE Armed Forces, who took part in the exercises, said last night. The training programme, similar to the US navy's aerial combat training school known as Top Gun, made famous by the eponymous film, is designed to stretch pilots to the limit and train them to work in co-operation with other air forces. It is held at Nellis Air Force Base, just north of Las Vegas

"OK guys, today is our day," Col Tareq al Bannay is seen telling the pilots in one scene at the start of the training. "We are the first from the UAE to have been invited to Red Flag. In the next two weeks, we have to take in as much as we can." "I stress this is a training so do not violate the rules," adds one US Air Force officer to all the pilots. In Red Flag exercises, conducted on a 40,000-square-kilometre training range, a Blue Team of pilots plays the role of the allies, and a Red Team of top US pilots play the aggressors.

The Emiratis flew F-16 Desert Falcons Block 60, which are among the most advanced F-16s ever built. In a dramatic sequence, the UAE fighters are attacked and have their radars scrambled by enemy planes, which then appear to vanish into the sky. "They surrounded us and then disappeared," said Col Tareq al Bannay. "This is what actually happens during war, so a pilot should be fully aware of what is happening around him."

A short time later, however, the UAE pilots get their revenge and defeat a number of enemy fighters. "Once you take off and you feel the roar of the engine, you feel your blood is rushing through your veins," said one of pilots, Major Hassan al Anazi. "And once it hits your head, it is a rush. It better than any other thing I've experienced in life." The screening was attended by Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed, who represented the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed. Col Tareq al Bannay added at the screening: "I would definitely make sure that people in the UAE know, whether they were local citizens or non-citizens, there are people up there protecting you. You can sleep safe, drive and have fun, you have a safer sky." @Email:[e-mail]

Desert Falcons will be broadcast in Arabic tonight on Abu Dhabi Al Emarat TV at 10pm. The English version will follow on Abu Dhabi Sports at 10.30pm. If you miss the documentary, it will be rebroadcast on Saturday, June 26 during the weekly programme Al Madar on Abu Dhabi Sports.