History
MAPLE FLAG can be considered a Canadian version of the United States Air Force's RED FLAG, which is held several times a year at Nellis Air Force Base (using the Nellis Air Force Range). RED FLAG was conceived during the Vietnam War when the USAF found that 90 percent of combat aircraft losses were during a pilot's first 10 missions; the first RED FLAG occurred in 1975.
MAPLE FLAG copied the RED FLAG format in 1978 and until 1987, it was held twice a year, and reduced to once a year after 1987. MAPLE FLAG has only been cancelled three times, once in 1991, due to Operation Desert Storm, and again in 1999 due to combat operations in Kosovo. In 2011, Maple Flag was cancelled due to NATO military commitments in Libya.
Read more about this topic: Maple Flag
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)