F-5 Tiger IIs (World Fighter Aircraft Collection)

These F-5 Tiger II fighters taxying out during the 2009 Marine Corps Air Station Yuma airshow in Arizona are unusual in several ways.

The first oddity is that the F-5 was built by Northrop mainly for export, although it did see very limited combat with American forces in Vietnam.   It was also intended as an air force fighter, however these two have Marine Corps insignia.  Finally, these aircraft are painted in a very unusual disruptive color scheme, not at all like the current US military low visibility grey scheme.

The reason for all of these peculiarities is that these aircraft are not part of the regular United States combat forces, instead they are "aggressor" aircraft operated by the Marine Corps, a similar function to those performed by the air force at Nellis Air Force Base with their F-15 aggressors and F-16 aggressors.   Since the main purpose of aggressors is to allow American aircraft to fight against aircraft which have different flight characteristics than their own, it makes more sense to use F-5s in this role than F-15s or F-16s, which are part of the regular military.   Indeed the Marine Corps bought these ex-Swiss Air Force F-5s because they perform much like the Russian MiG-21 "Fishbed" fighter.   The color scheme and red star on the tail are a deliberate recreation of standard Soviet paint styles.