How Americans secretly used Soviet aircraft Nobody in the USSR knew that its potential enemy had dozens of Soviet fighters in combat service. Aerial combat training is an essential element in the training of military pilots. It is for this purpose that the air forces of many countries set up dedicated squadrons, so-called “aggressors”, whose task it is to imitate the enemy during exercises. Usually, the role of enemy fighters is performed by domestically manufactured aircraft that have similar technical characteristics to those of the relevant foreign planes. However, there have been exceptions to this rule. For example, during the Cold War, the Americans secretly created a squadron of real Soviet MiGs.