Two Minute Brief: Top Gun


The Navy’s premiere fighter pilot training school, TOPGUN has a long history training some of the U.S. Navy’s greatest aviators. The United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (SFTI program), more popularly known as Topgun or TOPGUN, teaches fighter and strike tactics and techniques to selected Naval Aviators and Naval flight officers, who return to their operating units as surrogate instructors. It began as the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School, established on March 3, 1969, at the former Naval Air Station Miramar, north of San Diego, California. In 1996, the School was merged into the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center at NAS Fallon, Nevada.
During the halt in the bombing campaign against North Vietnam (in force from 1968 until the early 1970s), Topgun established itself as a center of excellence in fighter doctrine, tactics and training. By the time aerial activity over the North resumed, most Navy squadrons had a Topgun graduate. According to the USN, the results were dramatic. The Navy kill-to-loss ratio against the North Vietnamese Air Force (NVAF) MiGs soared from 3.7:1 (1965–1967)[citation needed] to 13:1 (after 1970)[citation needed], while the Air Force, which had not implemented a similar training program, actually had its kill ratio worsen for a time after the resumption of bombing, according to Benjamin Lambeth's The Transformation of American Airpower.
The success of the U.S. Navy fighter crews vindicated the fledging DACT school's existence and led to Topgun becoming a separate, fully funded command in itself, with its own permanently assigned aviation, staffing, and infrastructural assets. Successful Topgun graduates who scored air-to-air kills over North Vietnam and returned to instruct included "Mugs" McKeown and Jack Ensch. The first U.S. aces of the Vietnam War, Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Willie Driscoll, received no official Topgun training, but had, during F-4 training with VF-121, flown against Topgun instructors.

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