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More than 60 Warriors from the 482nd Attack Squadron participated in Red Flag 25-1 from Jan. 21 to Feb. 7 and Bamboo Eagle 25-1 Feb. 8 to 13 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. and Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Calif.
Each flying squadron in the 25th Attack Group completes a rotational four-month phase of training followed by a twelve-month commitment to one of four combatant commands, CENTCOM, EUCOM, INDO-PACOM, and AFRICOM.
The Warriors had the opportunity to cap off their training cycle by flying two MQ-9s simultaneously in two back-to-back large force exercises. The squadron also benefited from zero sorties impacted by maintenance issues.
“We trained to operate in the stack full of other aircraft, but being up on comms with seventy-five plus other manned assets was an experience for me,” said 1st Lt. Emilio Chaviano, 482nd Attack Squadron MQ-9 pilot. “It was eye opening for sure. As far as going out and executing the mission, it’s nothing we haven’t done before, but seeing the other side of the coin and seeing what all the other assets deal with and work with is definitely where the growth happened for me.”
Senior Airman Riley Coggins, 482nd ATKS sensor operator, agreed that the large force exercise offered the aircrews an unparalleled experience and helped him gain new awareness and perspective that expands his consciousness.
“Say we have an F-16 or F-15 coming in, I have to understand what that actually looks like and now I understand their capabilities better, so it makes more sense to me why they are on station, what their purpose is and what they’re going to do,” Coggins said. “We came here knowing ‘the what,’ like book smarts and now we’re leaving with the wisdom.”
As the crews themselves gained wisdom, so do the squadrons, institutionally.
“Incrementally each squadron has built upon the previous squadron’s lessons learned,” said Lt. Col. Ryan O’Brien, 482nd Attack Squadron director of operations. “Our integration and ability to execute was certainly a big win for us. Every time we launched, we got to the fight on time as a two-ship.”
O’Brien offered a contrast in relation to current evolution of aircrew training and his experiences as an MQ-9 pilot, prior to implementation of the program.
“Our lieutenants and young airmen are much better prepared for the next generation of Air Force employment than I ever was,” he said. “I knew 24/7 combat operations within a CENTCOM mindset, and I never thought I’d be exposed to a Red Flag or large force exercise. Now we have lieutenants serving as functional team leads in the mission planning cell for a high-end, high-intensity Red Flag fight,” he said. “It’s simply phenomenal that we are able to rise to that occasion.”
At the conclusion of Red Flag, crews launched aircraft from Creech Air Force Base, Nev. to forward deploy them at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, where they then launched to participate in Bamboo Eagle.
“Red Flag ended on a Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning we launched out of Creech and an hour and a half later we were landing in China Lake,” O’Brien said. “Within 24 hours we were standing up new operations for a new [area of operations] off the West Coast of the U.S. to fight a different fight.”
O’Brien said that thanks to proficiency of maintenance Airmen and coordination in real time with the air crews, the Warriors benefited from excellent sortie generation. Throughout both exercises, the squadron maintained a strong operational performance by launching nearly all planned missions, with only weather-related cancellations.
With strong winds and rain impacting the Las Vegas valley during portions of the exercises, and the pivot to operations over the west coast and the Pacific Ocean, the squadron relied on weather professionals from the 25th Operations Support Squadron.
“We started forecasting for Red Flag prior to our arrival and for Bamboo Eagle we knew we would be facing some challenges with topography and geography in general and see how it challenged our platform, especially with the systems that were going to be rolling through,” said Tech. Sgt. Greggria Sylvester, 25th OSS weather craftsman. “It’s a lot more dynamic. Even if an aircraft can take off, if they’re flying in a mountainous area, a lot of things change. Because our sorties are so long, you have to forecast ahead up to 22 hours, and we had to do a subset of a forecast for the mountains and on top of that we have to track systems that are 300 to 500 miles off the coast.”
Sylvester said that integration with units as a weather professional helped her understand how each platform is impacted and how weather will benefit or impair operations.
While weather predicted conditions in the air, intelligence professionals removed uncertainty in adversarial threats and capabilities.
This evolution of Red Flag was also first for the 25th OSS, initiating the first iteration of evaluations during Red Flag.
“Both teams showed a very strong sense of analysis,” said Tech. Sgt. Cameron Marshall, 25th OSS group intelligence training flight chief. “They were really good at pulling out the relevant information, or the ‘so what,’ and were able to relay it in a timely fashion.”
The Intelligence airmen worked through limitations during the exercise because they couldn’t rely on automated systems to prepare some of their products.
“Instead of automatically plotting something, they had to use geographic coordinates on a chart. They plotted all the relevant threats and let the air crew see along their flight path what might get in the way and what could be relevant.”
Marshall said the intelligence airmen also supported the exercise as deputy team leads in some cases, giving them experience supporting ISR platforms beyond the MQ-9.
Following the exercises, the Warriors presented their out-brief to 432d Wing leadership and were subsequently certified to return to combat in their commit phase. This meant the Warriors successfully conducted operation planning and execution, adapted to rapidly changing operational environments, delegated risk-informed decision making for challenging conditions and will present a credible force for combatant commanders that can integrate into the Joint fight.
| Date Taken: | 03.05.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 03.05.2025 18:24 |
| Story ID: | 492086 |
| Location: | CREECH AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA, US |
| Web Views: | 30 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 482nd Attack Squadron certifies for combat following Red Flag and Bamboo Eagle 25-1, by MSgt Dillon White, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
