Photo By Senior Airman Xaviera Stevens | U.S. Airmen assigned to the 115th Fighter Wing, Wisconsin Air National Guard, complete...... read more read more
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SAVANNAH, Ga. (January 31, 2025) – More than 1,000 Airmen and 56 aircraft from across the United States came together to sharpen their swords of Air Dominance during exercise Sentry Savannah 25-1, hosted by the Savannah Combat Readiness Training Center, commonly referred to as the Air Dominance Center, located at Savannah Air National Guard Base, Georgia, Jan. 21-31, 2025.
Sentry Savannah is an annual National Guard Bureau joint exercise that brings together warfighters from across the Air Force and Air National Guard’s premier fourth- and fifth-generation fighter units to integrate their tactics and air-to-ground capabilities. The exercise aims to enhance the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense’s fighter jet readiness, interoperability, and capability in an air-to-air simulated combat environment.
“We can build scenarios north to south that will replicate the highest threat that these fighters can expect to face anywhere they go in the world,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Joseph "Stone" Walz, exercise director for Sentry Savannah 25-1, Air Dominance Center, Georgia Air National Guard. “We can create real training scenarios that incorporate the highest level surface-to-air threats and ground-to-air threats so that fighter units that come here to train are pushed to execute their full envelope of war fighting tactics.”
Sentry Savannah gives Airmen the opportunity to experience a real, deployed-like environment by putting them at a location with a small number of full-time personnel and limited equipment with the expectation to operate and generate missions at full capacity, said U.S. Air Force Col. Stephen "Tracker" Thomas, commander of the Air Dominance Center, Georgia Air National Guard. It encourages Airmen to adapt and overcome challenges related to limited space, infrastructure, and resources, which helps them build skills and competence against our adversaries.
“We rarely go into combat alone,” said U.S. Air Force Capt. Thomas Treptau, student pilot, 1st Fighter Wing, Joint Base Langley-Eustis. “This [exercise] is an opportunity for us to work with other squadrons, other aircraft, and fly with other pilots that we normally wouldn't. We get to learn their kind of tactics, techniques, procedures, and how they operate, which allows us to come up with a good plan of how to execute the mission together.”
In addition to the total joint force integration of aircraft, Sentry Savannah gives Airmen the opportunity to practice functioning as a coherent and seamless team in a one-of-a-kind airspace 200 miles long and over 150 miles wide located off the East Coast of the United States.
Walz emphasized the scenarios they are able to build for the pilots who train here and explained they build these training missions around the specific units training needs. “That means the jets can go out there, fly to their max capability of the aircraft, from surface to 60,000 feet, no restrictions, no thinking about anything other than the highest level tactics that they can try and operate against,” said Walz.
"The Air Dominance Center incorporates everything a fighter squadron needs to hit the ground running such as operations centers, sustainment services, and a world-class facility for monitoring training flights, debriefing and reviewing missions in a classified environment," said Walz.
Thomas stated that our adversaries pay attention to us and the training taking place in Savannah. They see these fighters gathering to focus on the air dominance mission, ensuring that they are sharpening their skills in air-to-air combat. This serves as a deterrent against potentially nefarious actions in different regions of the world.
“I think one of the coolest missions that the F-22 does in its role of air dominance is deterrence,” said Treptau. “It's used for avoiding conflict. It's used for force posturing and seeing us getting together to integrate with others and the lethality and the capability that we bring to that fight is just another way to deter the next fight.”
This iteration of Sentry Savannah 25-1 included the following fighter aircraft: F-35 assigned to the 187th Fighter Wing, Alabama National Guard, as well as some assigned to the 115th Fighter Wing, Wisconsin National Guard, F-16C Fighting Falcons, assigned to the 122nd Fighter Wing, Indiana National Guard, F-22 Raptors and T-38 Talons assigned to the 1st Fighter Wing, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, and U.S. Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets assigned to the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort.
“We're not only just briefing together, but also mission planning together,” said Treptau. “I'm seeing guys I went to school or pilot training with, or flew with in my last squadron, in a different aircraft now, and we're able to learn about each other's tactics, each other's capabilities, in a way that is really good for understanding how to be effective in that joint fight.”
Many aircraft support personnel were also onsite for Sentry Savannah 25-1, including aircraft maintenance: U.S. Air Force Airman 1st Class Owen Bahr, aircraft maintenance specialist, 115th Fighter Wing, Wisconsin National Guard, noted that they have an alert mission back at their home base which, when on rotation, requires them to be able to put jets in the air in fifteen minutes if needed for emergencies.
“Right now the [F-16 Fighting Falcons aircrafts] are still running [the alert mission], but the [F-35 lightning II aircrafts] will be taking over soon, hopefully,” said Bahr. “So doing all this training and making sure that we know how to fix the jets, and the pilots are trained in them, that's how we can help defend the homeland.”
Even as a snowstorm hit Savannah, Georgia, Airmen assigned to 63 different units ramped up to participate in the exercise, noted Bahr. Though it canceled some flights, Airmen from northern states who were staying on base stepped in to help the Georgia guard handle unfamiliar weather, cover for airmen off base, and accelerate the recovery of flight operations.
“[We are] building something that is tangible, that is real, that is going to provide value to our warfighter, and that is going to increase the capabilities, not only of the pilots … but of the machines that they operate, so that when we call upon them, they will be ready to go,” said Walz.
| Date Taken: | 01.31.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.06.2025 10:02 |
| Story ID: | 489869 |
| Location: | SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, US |
| Web Views: | 27 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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