Three types of Air Force fighter aircraft — F-22s, F-15s and camouflage-painted F-16s — dramatically roared off Hono­lulu Airport’s Reef Runway on Monday as part of the Hawaii Air National Guard’s ongoing Sentry Aloha air combat exercise.

The real drama was high in the sky, however, as about two dozen of the jets that came from Hawaii and around the country electronically took aim at one another in the type of peer-to-peer air war the United States might be forced to fight in the future.

Hundreds of miles north of the Hawaiian Islands, sometimes higher than commercial airliners fly, about a dozen "good guys" in F-22s and F-15s simulated a deep strike mission against 14 "bad guys" in F-16s as well as F-22s, the Air Force said.

The type of air dominance the Air Force maintains has kept American ground troops from being killed by enemy aircraft since 1953, said Col. Duke "Juice" Pirak, an F-22 pilot and acting vice commander of the Hawaii Air Guard’s 154th Wing.

The United States has the only operational latest-technology, "fifth-generation" stealth fighter in the F-22 Raptor, but some countries, Russia and China among them, are developing comparable aircraft.

"What’s going on is a lot of our potential enemies and near peers have invested in that same force — they learn from us, they watched us and are now starting to invest in the way that we are," Pirak said without mentioning any specific countries. "So while not commonplace at all now, large air wars will be potentially an integral part of a future war, a major battle."

Sentry Aloha, hosted by the Hawaii Air Guard and utilizing vast parts of the Pacific, is held several times a year here.

For this iteration, which started Jan. 20, F-22s and F-16s from Alaska, as well as F-15s from Massachusetts, are participating. More than 400 visiting airmen and nearly 60 aircraft from six states are taking part in the exercise out of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, including some of Hawaii’s 20 Raptors, the Air Guard said.

The scenario Monday began with the fighter groups about 100 miles apart, with the "good guys" working with radar control to determine the location of the enemy fighters while dealing with radio chatter and simulated ground-to-air missiles, Pirak said.

Engagement starts beyond visual range, and those that make it within sight "merge" and actually dogfight, he said.

Fighter dogfighting "hasn’t happened on a scale that we see in these exercises — and that’s a good thing," Pirak said. A key reason, he said, is the conventional deterrent effect of the Air Force.

"There’s a lot of folks that just simply don’t want to tangle with us in that way," Pirak said.

The air exercise is set to run through the end of the month.