QF-106 Drones

"Pacer Six Program"
1990-1998

Tyndall AFB, FL
Holloman AFB, NM

Wearing the “stars and bars” insignia of the US Air Force, an F-106 Delta Dart cruises in level flight. Unobserved, another USAF aircraft falls in trail behind the Dart and fires an air-to-air missile at it. The F-106 performs an aggressive slice in hopes of evading the missile, releasing countermeasures all the while.  But it’s no use – tracking unerringly, the missile cuts the F-106 in half.  Debris rains from the resulting fireball, but there are no parachutes.  Why is one US fighter being shot down by another?  This is a typical day for the 82 Aerial Target Squadron (ATRS). The 82nd flies the USAF’s last active-duty Delta Darts as Full-Scale Aerial Targets (FSATs) for weapons tests.

Under United States law (Title 10, Section 2366 of the U.S. Code) a missile system must undergo lethality testing before it can enter full-scale production.  This means it must be fired at a combat-configured target, which for air-to-air or surface-to-air missiles is a full-size, fully capable aircraft. The cost and hazards of using a manned aircraft from the active-duty inventory for this purpose are obvious.  Instead, the target is an unmanned FSAT drone.  Our beloved Darts are dying to give birth to new weapons systems.

The “Q” prefix in QF-106 signifies a drone conversion.  In 1986, a contract was awarded to Flight Systems Inc., later Honeywell, to modify 194 surplus Delta Darts stored at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona to QF-106A target drone configuration. This program came to be known as Pacer Six, and the first flight of a converted drone took place in July of 1987. Following the completion of an initial batch of ten QF-106s in 1990 (the QF-106 Pacer Six program ran from 1990-1998), most of the work was transferred to the USAF itself. Much of the conversion work was done before the aircraft were removed from storage at AMARC, with further work being carried out at East St Louis, Illinois. The QF-106s began operating as a Full-Scale Aerial Target (FSAT) in late 1991 at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and later at the Eglin Gulf Test Range in Florida, based at Holloman and Tyndall. A typical mission would employ the QF-106 as a target for an infrared homing missile. The aircraft had burners placed on pylons underneath the wings to act as IR sources for heat-seeking missiles, but it must be admitted that no real enemy would be so accommodating as to add these burners to make their planes better targets. However, the intention of the program was for the QF-106 to survive repeated engagements with air-to-air missiles, to make it possible for each QF-106 to last as long as possible before it was destroyed. The last shoot down of a QF-106 (57-2524) took place at Holloman AFB on February 20, 1997. Today, the QF-106 has been replaced by QF-4 Phantom drones.

Almost 2/3, approx 199 aircraft, of all the Sixes produced were converted to QF-106 Aerial Target Drones under the 'Pacer Six' Program, most expended by the 82 ATRS at Tyndall AFB (Florida).  In the course of active operations QF106 drone ops, which extended to January of 1998, there were several flyable survivors which were able to return to AMARC for storage.

"Swamp Things" The Final Chapter of the QF-106 Drones
There were also a few non-flying airframes left on the Tyndall ramp at the end of the 'Pacer Six' Program (7 aircraft), as well, and originally they were parked in that part of the Tyndall AFB ramp known as the 'Swamp' (although in unflyable condition) see

Purchase of these remaining airframes was subsequently negotiated by a private aviation enterprise based in Texas (David Tokoff's GRECO-AIR in El Paso) and a tentative deal was struck with DRMS to sell the aircraft for purposes of restoring them as non-flying, museum-display grade aircraft.  One of these aircraft was reportedly ear-marked for restoration as a fully operational flying specimen, although it appears that perhaps two of them may have been fully restored at this time for flight (including a two-seat B model); however, due to the fact that stringent 'de-mil' requirements for combat aircraft require cutting the airframe structural members to render them incapable of further flight applications, this stalled the whole purchase package for some time.

As of Mar 2004) the non-flying survivors have all been trucked from the Tyndall ramp and shipped to GRECO-AIR's El Paso base of operations, whered most of them are awaiting restoration.

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Three QF-106's are dropped into the Gulf of Mexico to become artificial reefs. Submitted by Doug Peck