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More than 100 Airmen and DOD civilians from the 509th Bomb Wing rapidly boarded a C-17 Globemaster III and departed from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri for a Field Training Exercise at Ft. Smith, Arkansas to help train Airmen on Agile Combat Employment concepts, with support from the Arkansas National Guard.
This type of training relies on multi-capable airmen to step outside their regular career fields and operate independently in an expeditionary environment, making Air Force operations more difficult for adversaries to target while projecting airpower.
“It's critical for agile combat employment support units to come together to enable the Striker mission, which allows that B-2 platform to be anywhere, anytime,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Khary Davis, 509th Civil Engineer Squadron, commander.
ACE shifts operations from centralized physical infrastructures to a network of smaller, dispersed locations, or cluster bases, that are geographically close to one another providing protection for each other and command and control capabilities. This exercise addressed a broader initiative by the Air Force to enhance training in austere environments where Airmen are required to use a wide array of skills to accomplish the mission.
During this exercise, the 509th Bomb Wing practiced a variety of skills and capabilities, like Rapid Airfield Damage Repair, land navigation, Tactical Combat Casualty Care, and base defense, that support ACE. These skills enable Airmen to take on the challenge of building, maintaining, and defending a forward operating base in an austere environment which allows the Air Force to project airpower from anywhere.
“This exercise focused on decentralized operations,” said Davis. ”We were based out of Ft. Smith. From this hub, we were able to send out Airmen to different regions, conduct missions, then bring them back in to refit, reorganize and send them back for future missions.”
RADR training ensures that if a major airfield is attacked, Airmen will have the tools and knowledge to get the airfield back to a fully functional state. The training took place at the 188th Regional Training Site on Ebbing Air National Guard Base, where the cadre created craters on the airfield, simulating damage from an attack. Airmen from the 509th Civil Engineer Squadron then quickly cleared the debris, prepped the repair site, poured new concrete, and capped the repair with asphalt.
Airmen also flew via Army helicopter to the Ft. Chaffee Joint Maneuver Training Center to conduct land navigation training. The Airmen trekked over harsh terrain surveying possible locations for airstrips while engaging with simulated hostile forces along the way.
The opposition were members of the 509th Security Forces Squadron, who also spent more than 30 consecutive hours camping at Ft. Chaffee without support from the main body to enhance the realism of the training.
Master Sgt. Wesley Nesbitt, 509th Civil Engineer Squadron, superintendent of the engineering flight, said that an FTX of this scale and duration, combining the efforts of civil engineering, force support, security forces, and other career fields, paid dividends for more than just the units involved.
“This is a win for the 509th Bomb Wing because we are one of the first to do this,” said Nesbitt. “We are the tip of the spear. We want to be the blueprint for what other units are doing,. We want to be the unit that other bases are trying to emulate.”
The exercise also gave a lot of Airmen opportunities to step up and take on additional responsibilities that they might not have otherwise had.
“Being here was a thrilling event to see our Airmen step up,” said Davis. “Senior Airmen taking lead of teams, staff sergeants taking lead of small units, and seeing our second lieutenants step up as we simulated casualties to our major and our senior NCOs, so they were the ones who ran the camp and the decentralized operations, and really seeing them blossom into their roles and take on those leadership positions without hesitation is very fulfilling as a leader.”
The 509th Bomb Wing completed 150 pre-planned training objectives across multiple career fields, during a first-of-its-kind exercise for Team Whiteman, and more exercises like this are planned to sharpen the wing’s ability to project airpower, anytime, anywhere.
| Date Taken: | 08.08.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.01.2024 10:05 |
| Story ID: | 482190 |
| Location: | FORT SMITH, ARKANSAS, US |
| Web Views: | 36 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, The 509th Bomb Wing executes Agile Combat Employment training, by A1C Matthew Domingos, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
