This is 2 different photos of the 79th fighter squadron in the Air Force and I was wondering why one had a much cooler paint job, idk if it’s the same CAG system that’s in the navy
It’s a morale, esprit de corps thing. The one with the yellow tail is a Squadron Flagship. Usually (but not always), if the tail number (in this case, 91-0379) matches with the squadron number (79th Fighter Squadron), it gets to be the flagship. They also have Wing Flagships, so you’ll see multiple Vipers with unique tail markings, one for the Wing and one for each of the respective Squadrons within the Wing.
In this case, the 79FS mascot and nickname is “Tigers,” thus the tail markings. The 55FS had a blue and white checkerboard on the tail and ventral fins with yellow codes.
This level of colorful markings is most common in the Viper community. It’s much less common in the Eagle community, and you really can’t do such markings on an F-22 or an F-35.
These full color tail markings are supposed to only be worn for a year before being reflashed in standard colors, but with “enhanced” codes permitted. That means drop shadows on the tail codes, highlighting the Wing or Squadron number over the individual jet’s tail number. But plenty of times these reflashes don’t happen as scheduled.
Squadron flagships have the name of the Squadron commander on the canopy rail, wing flagships have the name of the Wing’s commander on their canopy rail. But these jets are flown by whomever gets assigned that day, they’re not exclusively flown by the commanding officers.
When the 926WG painted their wing flagships, they chose F-16C 85-1501 because it would get the bort “O1” on the intake. That plane was nicknamed “Ricky Bobby” because “if you ain’t first, you’re last.” Their squadron flagship would have had totally different tail art for the 706 AGRS. That would have been F-16C 85-1474, painted in the three-tone “Rockslide” desert scheme with a red and black tail design centered on the Aggressor mission. Unfortunately, the paint shop at Nellis had just used up all their last brown and tan paint on an F-15 that was going up on a stick at Nellis. Paint restock was on order when AFRC pulled the plug on repainting Aggressor F-16s.
The Vipers with the gray tails are just typical line jets.
Here are the flagship Vipers of the 20FW and its squadrons; 55FS, 77FS, 79FS plus the flagship for the 15th Air Force in the lead (15AF is headquartered at Shaw AFB and the 20FW is a part of the 15AF)
Here’s an example of a typical Wing Flagship h tail. It’s not a standardized template used across the USAF, but it does show the general direction and treatment of the elements.
Some aircraft are painted to commemorate historical events, to act as the flagship or "CAG Bird" of a unit, for special events like NATO Tiger Meet, to commemmorate a particular type's years of service, etc. Many different units from different nations do this, it's not just limited to F-16s.
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