For weeks, the aviation social media sites have been full of what is now firmly the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force's most significant major exercise, and Cobra Warrior (CW23-1) was not going to disappoint.
Early March saw the participants arriving at RAF Waddington and Connigsby, both in Lincolnshire, and this first stage of the 2023 exercise would feature three new airforces. Five India Mirage 2000s from 40 Wing at Gwalior air base would join Finnish Air Force F/A-18c's Hornets from HavLLv 31 at Kuopio-Rissala. They were joined at Waddington by previous participants, the Belgian Air Force, with six F-16AMs visiting from 10 Wing at Florennes.
The final first-time participants came from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, arriving at RAF Conningsby in late February. The RSAF bought six Eurofighter Typhoons from the 10 Wing at Taif/King Fahd Air Base. They were made up of five single-seat Typhoons and a two-seat Typhoon T.
The weather was the usual miserable English: damp, grey, and cold. Yellow, no parking cones lined the local roads. The A-15 crawled with continuous bumper-to-bumper juggernauts, and while the Wave cafe and parking swelled daily to beyond bursting, the fast jet action made it all well worth the visit.
So here it is.
The weather was very mixed on all the days I attended.
KT208 Mirage 2000TI of the Indian Air Force from 40 Wing at Gwalior/Maharajpur Airbase.
FA-136 F-16AM "The X Tiger" wears another dramatic colour scheme to mark 70 years of the Belgium Airforce 31Squadron and 60 years of the NATO Tiger.
By the afternoon, sortie, the weather is not playing ball.
Meanwhile, across at RAF Coningsby, it's swift-moving.
ZK318/318 Typhoon FGR4.RAF departs RAF Coningsby as we do.
