We believe that fighter pilots, no matter what country they’re from, share a common bond.  That bond is an attitude of being the best, of knowing your superiority. 

When two fighter pilots meet from different countries, they shake hands, maybe a little more firm than with some regular guy on the street.  Although they both know they’re better than the other, they also know they share the uniqueness of being a fighter pilot.

                                             USA F/A-18C Hornet
                                               Photo by Unknown

This part of the Fighter Pilot University web site is an on going project.  We’re working to minimize mistakes.  If you see errors or omissions let us know.  If you have a digital image of a squadron patch/insignia or squadron histories, please send them our way.

There is an index of abbreviations, terms and aircraft at the end of each country’s list of fighter squadrons.  You will see under "mission" that we kept specific squadron flying missions quite simple.  Squadrons are listed as operational, meaning full-up go to war, defend the country squadrons, or training, any fighter lead-in, tactics/test, replacement training or other non-deployable squadrons.  Actually we had to guess on some of these based on aircraft flown and country assets.  We do not list ballet squadrons, squadrons that fly to music or squadrons whose reason for existing is to fly close formation.

Russian Su-27SMK
Photo by Kristof Jonckheer

If you fly an aircraft, jet or prop, that is used to attack other aircraft in the air or people and things on the ground, you made our list.  

If you’re in a squadron that trains future fighter pilots, instructed by fighter pilots you’re on our list.  If you fly a fighter jet used for reconnaissance or electronic warfare, you too, are on our list, unless there are more than two occupants.  Once you get to the family version of some of these jets, 3-4 people inside, that’s just stretching it too much.

Again, if you see a mistake, your squadron isn’t listed here and you think it should be, you've got a squadron history or a digital image of a patch/insignia, we’d like to hear from you.  There’s a lot going on in the fighter community around the world, especially with respect to new jets and base closures.  We’d appreciate your inputs to make the information here as accurate as possible.

All histories are cut and pasted from various Internet sources.  So if there’s something wrong, we didn’t write it, but we’d be happy to correct it.

We’d like to thank the many photographers who’s work you see on these pages.  We’re making every attempt to credit all fighter pictures appropriately.  If you see one of your photos here and we didn’t give due credit, let us know and we’ll get that straightened out.  Some of our contributing photographers have their own web site.  On our Links page you’ll find an acknowledgement of those sites and the link to get to some really great sites and pictures.

Fighter Pilot University Dean of Students