(and one green flag)
Texas Lake is slang for Delamar Dry Lake. It is a refueling and staging area for the Blue forces.
The color photograph is from an USAF news release on controllers at Nellis AFB. The black and white image is a perspective corrected image of what is on the screen in the USAF photograph.
Red Flag by Walter J. Boyne
An article from Air Force Magazine about the history of Red Flag, with photos of the MI-24 Hind helicopter and the TV Ordnance Scoring System (TOSS)
Sierra Hotel by C. R. Anderegg
"Sierra Hotel" is about fighter planes, pilots and techniques in the decade after Vietnam, but there is quite a bit of information (about 20% of the book) regarding the creation of Red Flag, the initial aggressor squadron, the ACMI and TOSS scoring system, and some information on the use of SAM sites and smokey-SAMs. The book has its share of "good stories", including the legend of Jeremiah Weed.
This book is available on-line in pdf format, but buying a copy and reading it a chapter or two a day at Peet's would be far more enjoyable than printing out 228 pages. However, for those who just want to read the Red Flag portions of the book, download a copy here. It's a 4 Mbyte download on a server doing about 17kB/s, so even on DSL, give it some time.
Book pages PDF pages Contents 72-79 90-97 Creation of the Aggressor Squadron 89-101 107-119 Red Flag 108-110 126-128 Introduction of the ACMI range at Nellis (electronic scoring) 113-116 131-134 Alterations of the Nellis ranges to suit Red Flag, i.e. targets, SAM sites, etc. Introduction of video cameras on the planes and Smokey Sam 187-189 205-207 "The True Story of Jerimiah Weed". A story about a plane crash near Alamo, a bar, and cheap bourbon.
