The IAF were meant to participate in Red Flag (Vegas) in 2013 but that year's Red Flag was cancelled because of US budget cuts so the IAF has decided to opt for "plan B" aka Red Flag Alaska. The IAF itself says it wants to take part in one Red Flag (Vegas/Nellis) every 5 years thus it should have been 2008-2013-2018 but with the 2013 edition cancelled the IAF did not wish to go 10 years between exercises and thus is taking part in Red Flag Alaska 2016. Thus there wasn't a concious decsion made to switch from Red Flag Vegas to Alaska to avoid embarassment to anything of the kind. A total misrepresentation of the facts.
The "fraticide" issues were fairly expressed in that infamous YouTube "debreif". The IAF had intially been very hesitent because they weren't networked with NATO assets (friendly fighters and E-3 AWACS) thus they had held their fire which resulted in heavy losses for the IAF side in the early stages of the exercise as they waited. Subsequently the IAF fighter jocks ensured that they reduced their losses by being less conservative with their engagments which had lead to the other extreme- higher fraticide rates but less IAF losses so job done as far as the IAF are concerned. This element is the most trivial part of the entire EX as the IAF would NEVER be networking with NATO or engaging in joint air campaigns, all of their assets are inter-linked with their own data-links back home, the IAF only goes to Red Flag to validate their own training practices and learn from others, it isn't there to learn how to fight with NATO so an entirely moot point.
