In the summer of 2010, Maj. Kirk Soroka of the Canadian Air Force spoke to Defence IQ live from Exercise Maple Flag 43, the annual joint air training programme coordinated by the Canadian Forces...

1. Military Flight Training 2011: Major Kirk Soroka, Canadian Forces
In the summer of 2010, Maj. Kirk Soroka of the Canadian Air Force spoke to us live from Exercise
Maple Flag 43, the annual joint air training programme coordinated by the Canadian Forces.
Major Kirk 'Rambo' Soroka from 409
Squadron Cold Lake, undergoing a last
minute check before take off during a
scramble of training aircraft.
Photo: MCpl Jo-Anne Verreault
Defence IQ: Major, it’s great to have you on the show. How are you?
Maj. Soroka: Good morning, it’s a real pleasure to be on the show.
Defence IQ: Thanks for taking some time out for us. Obviously you’re very busy at this point in time
as I believe we’re now one third of the way through this year’s annual Maple Flag exercise, which
you’re overseeing out in Cold Lake, Alberta. Sir, can you tell us how well this year’s training is going,
what’s on the agenda and which forces are taking part this time round?
Maj. Soroka: Sure. In fact right now we have our AMR morning launch, they’re just starting their
engines. They’re going to be taking off here, probably over the next half hour or forty five minutes.
Basically the exercise in my view is going along famously. We have German Special Forces here, we
have French pathfinders and Canadian paratroopers that are all operating in the joint environment. As
far as the jets, we’ve got about 50 fighters that are just finishing their mass brief, and they’re actually
all walking out to do their formation briefs, and then they’ll be jumping in their jets momentarily to get
flying. The exercise itself is... the weather clobbered us for a day and, believe it or not, today’s a clear
blue sky so we’re expecting a full up war.
Defence IQ: Fantastic. And, apologies if you get asked this quite a bit, but does Maple Flag see itself
as being in competition at all with the Red Flag exercise over in the US?
Maj. Soroka: Well, basically no, we’re not in competition. We actually make a conscious effort... the
Red Flag aggressors actually come up here and help us with our exercise by providing red air. Back
in 1974, at the end of the Vietnam War the US determined that young fighter pilots that were going
into combat were getting shot down within their first ten missions, so they stood up the exercise called
Red Flag. Canada saw the value of that and asked Red Flag to help them set up our equivalent
exercise which is Maple Flag. They’re de-conflicted, so right when our exercise ends the exercise in
Las Vegas commences. So Maple Flag ends and then a few days later there’s a Red Flag exercise

2. and throughout the year there’s more, I guess, Red Flag exercises but theirs are basically just two
weeks, or they’ve extended theirs to three weeks, where ours is one solid set of periods, so we have
four months of instruction – four weeks of training, two periods of two weeks each, and so essentially
the air crew get to fly for a ten day war.
Defence IQ: I see. Great to get some clarity on that. So Major, why do you think it’s so beneficial to
take this multi-national approach to training forces and what are...>>
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Military Flight Training will be taking place between February 08-11, 2011. You can find out more by
visiting www.militaryflighttraining.com. You can also email enquire@defenceiq.com, or call us on +44
(0) 207 368 9300.
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