Photo By Staff Sgt. Jennifer Healy | U.S. Air Force personnel carry gear from a C-17 Globemaster III during Exercise NEXUS...... read more read more
Imagine: You are an Airman on deployment, but you are certainly not amongst the desert sand you’re used to. A humid breeze flutters the flaps of the nearby tents, and strange birds sing their foreign songs from the tropical foliage nearby. Volcanic rock crunches beneath your boots, and the smell of gunpowder and sulfur infuses the air from the nearby range as the sound of whistling mortars echoes overhead. You know that this isn’t the only location your Wingmen are working either, and if you think about it, you can hear the engines of heavy airlift like C-17 Globemaster IIIs and KC-46 Pegasus aircraft echoing through the mist-shrouded mountains nearby.
This isn’t what would be considered a “typical deployment” from the past two to three decades – indeed, it’s not even your typical exercise. This was the experience of more than 1,000 Citizen Airmen as they flew half a world away to the Indo-Pacific theater to plan, execute, participate in, and oversee Exercise NEXUS FORGE.
“For so many years we have operated almost exclusively in the European and Middle Eastern theaters,” said Maj. Gen. Scott Durham, 4th Air Force commander. “At the direction of senior leadership, we have begun to explore operations on a more global scale and in the western direction from the United States. Operating in the Indo-Pacific region presents us many challenges and an opportunity to test skills which we have not exercised in many years.”
Exercise NEXUS FORGE is the first of its kind in Air Force Reserve Command, combining multiple airlift assets like C-17s, KC-135s, KS-46s and C-130s, with airframes from Joint Partners to showcase strategic global mobility like never before. It was arranged in a “hub and spoke” format, meaning that multiple smaller units and capabilities were deployed from a central hub of command and control known as an Expeditionary Air Base.
NF25 operations took place at multiple locations throughout the Pacific, including Schofield Barracks, Kalaeloa Airport, East Range, Hickam Air Force Base, and Marine Corps Base Hawaii all on the island of Oahu; Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii; and Andersen Air Force Base, Guam.
While the exercise was led by 4th AF, participation and support came from across the Department of Defense. Planning and execution of the exercise required support from units assigned to the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Division, the Hawaii Army National Guard, and the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment. Exercise participants were Citizen Airmen assigned to at least 20 wings across the Air Force Reserve, spanning all three of the Numbered Air Forces under AFRC.
The prospect of coordinating with so many wings, as well as Total Force and Joint partners, was daunting but necessary, said Lt. Col. Gerard “G” Guevara, director of inspections with the 349th Air Mobility Wing and the officer selected to lead planning for NF25. Success required the effort of more than 100 Citizen Airmen from all over the country on the planning team, who each saw and understood the vision of the exercise and believed that it was the way of the future.
“No one had the courage to do this except for this team of humans and Maj. Gen. Durham,” said Guevara. “These are muscles in our skulls that we haven’t exercised – ever.”
Strategic planning wasn’t the only difficult hurdle, either. Exercises of this scale in the past were largely planned and funded by the active-duty component. The question became how to get so many geographically separated missions and wings to one location without undue cost?
The answer came through two things: The use of Area X-Ray at Schofield Barracks at the permission of the 25th ID at no cost to the Air Force, and leveraging pre-apportioned and budgeted annual tour orders for reservists to attend the exercise.
“The planning that goes into this is a very heavy lift for any organization,” said Durham. “In the past we have relied upon our active component to host these events. By AFRC hosting this event, we can ensure continuity of effort and timing while providing a cost-effective training platform by utilizing annual tour authority to cover the manpower for the event.”
Citizen Airmen arrived at Area X-Ray to find living conditions unlike what they had been used to at home. They quickly had to arrange cleaning and trash details while mitigating the outbreak of real-world illnesses among the troops to preserve the safety and well-being of their fellow Airmen as much as possible. All the while, Airmen were acclimating to a climate and surroundings they had never operated in before.
“This environment is giving us the chance to go after the jungle,” said Master Sgt. Christopher Whalen, 349th Security Forces Squadron noncommissioned officer in charge of readiness and training. “We've been stuck in the desert for so long. We've been playing in a theater where you can literally see as far as the eye can reach, right? Now it's time to transition a bit.”
Area X-Ray, located close to an Army firing range that operates on a daily basis, seemed like the perfect location to simulate an austere deployed environment. Planners went one step further and got creative to make the exercise even more immersive, even going so far as to use whistling footballs dropped from small unmanned aircraft systems to simulate the sound of mortar fire.
Airmen took to the immersive environment in stride, erecting tents to serve as work areas and donning mission oriented protective posture gear to defend against simulated oppositional forces and any threats the exercise could throw their way.
Citizen Airmen of every career field had the opportunity to demonstrate the war-fighting skills they practiced at home, from aerial port “port dawgs” palletizing and loading cargo for daily missions, to finance countering a simulated burglary, to aircrew coordinating with special operations forces to conduct straight line jumps out of mobility aircraft, to public affairs embedding with security forces as they countered simulated enemy fire. Everywhere evaluators looked, they saw a Citizen Airman rising to the challenge.
And a challenge it was indeed. Planners pulled out all the stops to throw the unconventional and unexpected at exercise participants to keep them on their toes – and they were never expected to respond to every situation perfectly, either.
“To me, perfection is the obstacle to excellence,” said Guevara. “Greatness comes from excellence, not perfection.”
With every first-of-its-kind event – and the inherent imperfections that come with being the first – comes some growing pains, but planners and players at all levels are tasked with learning from each success and failure.
“This is a proof-of-concept event, and we have a 100-person team in place at the exercise to capture lessons learned from every aspect of this exercise, so no matter the success of failure of the specific event or day there will be valuable knowledge gleaned from every situation,” said Durham.
Now that the boots and iron have departed and the exercise play areas have been returned as they were, the next challenge awaits on the horizon – what do we do with the information we have learned?
“This team has moved the earth to make this happen, and to see the vision and build this alongside their usual duties, that is amazing to me,” said Guevara. “But if we do not make this repeatable and sustainable, all of this is for nothing.”
Right now, the goal is to make Exercise NEXUS FORGE a repeated event for Citizen Airmen to participate in as part of their Air Force Forces Generation training cycle. With that intent in mind, the message then becomes clear to Citizen Airmen across the country: Be ready NOW, no matter what the world may throw your way.
| Date Taken: | 02.15.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 02.21.2025 10:40 |
| Story ID: | 491214 |
| Location: | SCHOFIELD BARRACKS, HAWAII, US |
| Web Views: | 93 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Pacific power nexus: Citizen Airmen prove their mettle in Exercise NEXUS FORGE, by 1st Lt. Marjorie Schurr, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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