We did do a trade study in 1993 to look at putting the real deal into an Adversary role. At the time Navy still had active and reserve Adversary Squadrons flying A-4, F-5, F-16 and F/A-18 (F-21 Kfir lease was used by Navy initially at Oceana with VF-43 and then by VMFT-401 at Yuma...the lease of aircraft was a great deal but but the O&M was outrageous so Navy send them back early). As much as we tried, we couldn't make the numbers work. The operational support side of using either Flanker or Fulcrums was a deal breaker. Nothing comes close to the A-4 or F-5 in generating Adversary presentations and cost and readiness levels of the Soviet designed aircraft couldn't come close. As it was, the Adversary community was under the gun anyway and VF-126, VFA-127, VF-45 and VF-43 were deactivated in favor of reserve units (VFC-12 and 13) picking up the load with existing aircraft (F/A-18A and F-5E respectively).
