The Elephant Walk featured 24 F-22s and six T-38s of the 1st Fighter Wing.
Aircraft belonging to the 1st Fighter Wing took part in a surge exercise at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, on Jan. 31, 2025. According to the U.S. Air Force, “the exercise was conducted to demonstrate the wing’s ability to rapidly deploy combat ready forces across the globe.”
As part of the exercise, 30 aircraft, 24 F-22 Raptors and six T-38 Talons, performed an Elephant Walk on the runway. In fact, the 1st FW maintains and operates both types as well as the sole F-22 Formal Training Unit.
This was only the second time this kind of drill was carried out at Langley: the first one was in 2019.
Quite rare until a few years ago, increasingly, “elephant walk” exercises are being conducted at airbases worldwide to test a squadron’s ability to launch large formations of aircraft at short notice.
As frequently explained here at The Aviationist, during these drills, combat aircraft—including tankers o bombers —taxi in close formation, simulating a minimum interval takeoff. Depending on the objective of the training event, the aircraft may either proceed with takeoff or return to their parking positions.
“Elephant Walks” have always been particularly frequent in South Korea where local-based U.S. Air Force jets (often alongside Republic of Korea Air Force planes) often stage such “collective shows of force” in response to North Korea’s aggressive posture and threats: tens of U.S. F-16s, A-10s and South Korea’s ROKAF KF-16s regularly taxi down the runway at Kunsan or Osan airbases, in collective “shows of force” whose primary aim is to test squadrons’ readiness to war time operations. However, similar exercises are also conducted at airbases in Continental U.S. and Europe as happened, in November 2018, when 35 F-35 Lightning II aircraft from the 388th and 419th Fighter Wing took part in an Elephant Walk at Hill AFB, Utah; in 2019 at MCAS Miramar; in 2020 at Aviano AB and Misawa AB; in 2021 at Altus AFB.
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Not only do the U.S. armed forces conduct these exercises.
For instance, since 2020, the Italian Air Force has also performed several Elephant Walks at its airbases in the last years, involving both tactical aircraft, such as the F-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft, as well as jet trainers.
Around the same time, other air forces also began organizing notable elephant walks with their combat aircraft. During the Qadir-2020 exercise, the Al Quwwat Al Jawwiya Il Misriya (Egyptian Air Force) conducted a show of force featuring 16 of its MiG-29M/M2 Fulcrum aircraft.
In 2021, the German Air Force staged an elephant walk at Neuburg Air Base, involving 18 Eurofighter jets from Taktisches Luftwaffengeschwader (TLG) 74. However, unlike most other elephant walks, the German display featured parked aircraft rather than taxiing ones, as evident from the wheel chocks visible in the photographs.
This highlights the fact that, in many cases, elephant walks have become more of a public relations opportunity for Air Force media teams rather than pure demonstrations of operational readiness. They offer a chance to capture striking images of aircraft assigned to a particular base or participating in an exercise; still a fascinating sight for aviation enthusiasts and photographers alike.
