One British writer claimed that the early school was influenced by a group of a dozen flying instructors from the British Fleet Air Arm who were assigned to Miramar as exchange pilots and served as instructors in VF-121. A British newspaper, "The Daily Telegraph", declared in a 2009 headline, "American Top Gun Fighter Pilot Academy Set Up by British." However, the British naval pilots mentioned in the article confirmed that the claim was false and that they had no role in creating the curriculum and no access to the classified programs that the TOPGUN instructors participated in to refine it. An earlier U.S. Navy air-to-air combat training program, the U.S. Navy Fleet Air Gunnery Units, or FAGU, had provided air combat training for Naval Aviators from the early 1950s until 1960. But a doctrinal shift, brought on by advances in missile, radar, and fire control technology, contributed to the belief that the era of the classic dogfight was over, leading to their disestablishment and a serious decline in U.S air-to-air combat proficiency that became apparent during the Vietnam War. The pilots who were part of the initial cadre of instructors at TOPGUN had experience as students from FAGU, but the TOPGUN curriculum at Naval Air Station Miramar in 1968 was not of anyone's creation but their own.