UK and Australia Deploy Typhoons and F-35 Fighters to U.S. for Red Flag 26 Combat Training.

The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia have launched Exercise Red Flag 26-1 at Nellis Air Force Base, integrating RAF Typhoon fighters and Royal Australian Air Force F-35A and E-7A assets into a large-scale, high-threat air combat scenario. The exercise matters because it stress-tests coalition airpower, command-and-control, and data sharing at the level required for a potential peer conflict.

Nevada’s Test and Training Range will again serve as a proving ground for coalition airpower as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia assemble at Nellis Air Force Base for Exercise Red Flag 26-1. The event brings together U.S. Air Force-led forces with RAF Typhoon FGR4 fighters and enabling assets, alongside a Royal Australian Air Force package centered on F-35A Lightning II aircraft and the E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control platform. Designed to replicate a contested, multi-domain battlespace with realistic threat replication and large-force employment, Red Flag 26-1 is structured to validate tactics, command-and-control and interoperability at the level required for peer-level conflict.
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Allied fighter aircraft from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia operate over Nevada during Red Flag 26-1, testing coalition air combat tactics, interoperability, and mission command in a realistic high-threat training environment (Picture source: UK MoD).

The United Kingdom’s arrival is paired with a substantial Australian commitment. On 2 February 2026, Australia’s Department of Defence confirmed the Royal Australian Air Force had deployed up to six F-35A Lightning II fighters, an E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft, and roughly 227 aviators to Nellis to participate in both Red Flag Nellis and the newer Bamboo Eagle 26-1 activity. Australian leadership framed the deployment as an interoperability accelerator, explicitly linking it to integrating different capabilities with key allies in an environment designed to feel uncomfortably close to wartime complexity.

Red Flag’s enduring value is that it forces allied aircrews to fight through the ugliest part of a modern air campaign before they ever face it for real. The RAF notes the exercise was established after the Vietnam War highlighted how lethal a pilot’s first ten combat missions can be, and today the Nevada Test and Training Range provides more than 12,000 square miles of airspace and 2.9 million acres of land to build that first ten missions pressure cooker at scale. For Red Flag 2026, the RAF describes a multinational force of about 3,000 participants from roughly 32 units spanning U.S. Air Force and Space Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and Air National Guard elements, alongside the RAF and RAAF, with a tactical command-and-control team orchestrating activity across air, ground, maritime, cyber and space domains.

Nellis’ own Red Flag overview adds an important political and operational nuance: there are three iterations annually, including one specifically open to Five Eyes participants. That framework matters because it explains why the UK and Australia can plug into the exercise at a depth that goes beyond coalition familiarisation. It is training designed around shared procedures, compatible mission data and sensitive tactics, and it is run to deliver multiple intensive combat sorties while keeping the risk inside a controlled range complex.

For the RAF, the main piece of the deployment is the Typhoon FGR4, a platform that has quietly evolved into a mature, weapons-rich multirole fighter optimised for both defensive counter-air and precision strike. RAF technical data lists the Typhoon’s twin EJ200 engines and a maximum speed of Mach 1.6, with operations up to 55,000 feet, and a sensor suite centred on the ECR 90 radar plus the PIRATE infrared search-and-track system for passive detection and tracking. Its current weapons menu reflects the UK’s post-Tornado Centurion shift: Meteor, AMRAAM and ASRAAM for air superiority, paired with Paveway IV guided bombs, Brimstone 2 for moving targets, and Storm Shadow for stand-off strike, with a 27mm Mauser cannon as a close-in option. The defensive aids fit is built around electronic counter and surveillance measures supported by missile approach warning, expendables and a towed radar decoy, a set of tools that becomes decisive when Red Flag layers dense simulated surface-to-air threats into the mission route.

Australia’s deployed fighter, the F-35A, is a very different kind of weapon system and that contrast is exactly why Red Flag 26-1 is operationally relevant. The F-35A is a 9g-capable fifth-generation multirole aircraft combining stealth with sensor fusion, and incorporates signature subsystems that reshape tactics: the Distributed Aperture System for spherical missile warning and day-night pilot vision, and the internally mounted Electro-Optical Targeting System for long-range detection and precision targeting. Secure tactical data links allow the aircraft to share fused data among other fighters and command-and-control platforms, with performance again at Mach 1.6 and a range of more than 1,350 miles on internal fuel, giving commanders options to trade stealthy persistence against the need to surge mass at the decisive moment. In Australian service, senior officers consistently describe the F-35A as a highly advanced, multi-role, supersonic stealth fighter, signalling Canberra’s intent to train it as the core of a coalition strike and counter-air package rather than a boutique asset.

Command and control is where the exercise becomes a genuine coalition stress test. Australia’s E-7A Wedgetail is designed for exactly this kind of fight, combining an advanced Multi-Role Electronically Scanned Array radar with mission crew consoles and integrated voice and data communications to coordinate joint air, sea and land activity in real time. On a standard mission, the Wedgetail can cover more than four million square kilometres and deploy long-range with in-flight refuelling, a capability that aligns cleanly with Red Flag’s large-force employment tempo and Bamboo Eagle’s longer-range mission design. On the UK side, the RAF’s RC-135W Rivet Joint adds a different layer: collecting and analysing signals across the electromagnetic spectrum to generate real-time strategic and tactical intelligence, an increasingly vital function when Red Flag scripts cyber and space elements into the problem and forces aircrews to operate inside a contested electromagnetic environment.

Red Flag and Bamboo Eagle sit at the intersection of deterrence messaging and practical readiness for high-end conflict. The RAF stresses aggressor forces, simulated enemy radars and surface-to-air missiles, and a target set running into the thousands, precisely to replicate what Western air arms expect in any peer fight where the air domain is contested from the first hour. Australia’s perspective is similar but more blunt: large multinational missions, no single aircraft able to achieve all objectives alone, and a deliberate focus on space and cyber threats alongside the traditional air, land and maritime picture. Bamboo Eagle, introduced in 2024, is particularly relevant because it extends this training into longer-range, more expeditionary mission sets across the western United States, reflecting the distances and basing challenges that dominate Indo-Pacific operational planning.

The takeaway is that Red Flag 26-1 is less an exercise than a live-fire style audit of coalition airpower credibility, conducted in one of the few places on earth where the threat density can be dialled up without crossing the threshold into real combat. The RAF’s decision to send a substantial Typhoon package with tanking and national ISTAR, Australia’s decision to bring F-35A and Wedgetail alongside a tactical command-and-control team, and the U.S. decision to host a Five Eyes-capable iteration at Nellis all point to the same operational truth: future air campaigns will be won by integrated systems, shared data and resilient command-and-control, not by any single best fighter.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.