Yes I can fly it without ACE, but for those in a 30+ community which revolves around ACE, its a necessity that it comes ready to play with it. It is YOUR mod afterall and you can do what you want with it, but I would figure you would want the *maximum* amount of people able to utilize it from the start ya know? Vanilla ArmA is just sub-par as far as gaming standards. For a 'military simulation' its simply not enough as vanilla.