November 15, 2006: In some parts of the world, there's no place to adequately train troops to use some types of weapons. This is particularly true with jet fighters. So much of the training for combat pilots in wealthy countries, takes place elsewhere. The United States and Canada are popular places for air combat training. Lots of wide-open spaces, excellent infrastructure and a popular place to station your troops. The latest nation to take this option is Singapore, which has just received the first of its new F-15 aircraft. Singapore is a small island nation, and the F-15 requires lots of uncongested air space for training. So Singapore will set up a training unit at an American air base inIdaho (Mountain Home Air Force Base). At least five of the Singaporean F-15s will be stationed in Idaho, and pilots will come in for anywhere from a few weeks, to a year or more, of training. Singapore will station its own maintenance personnel in Idaho, as these troops need the training as well (although they could get it at a Singapore air base, but there are only so many F-15 sorties flown out of Singapore.)

In the past, Singapore has had similar arrangements for its F-16 fighters and AH-64 helicopter gunships. Germany, and several other countries, have sent their pilots to the wide-open spaces of North American for training. Since most of these aircraft are made in the United States, most of them are also used by the U.S., foreign users get maintenance problems fixed a lot faster, and cheaper (trans-oceanic air freight is expensive).