MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. -- The 23d Wing hosted a joint sortie surge, July 13-16, here.
Shark Flag 20-03 was a training opportunity focused on integration and interoperability across joint assets in a tactical environment.
“We use Shark Flag to generate more sorties to help fulfill our flying-hour program,” said Maj. Gregory George, 75th Fighter Squadron assistant director of operations. “In addition to increasing our sortie totals, we have invited other units to participate, turning it into a unique training opportunity that provides integration training to both the 75th FS and the supporting units.”
Units with U.S. Special Operations Command, Alabama Air National Guard, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing and Air Combat Command joined assets assigned to the 23d Wing and 14th Flying Training Wing to complete scenarios focused on the objective of personnel recovery.
“Moody’s airspace is in a centralized location that allows us to ask units from other bases to participate without them having to go TDY to Moody, which significantly reduces the strain on their daily operations,” George said. “By having joint terminal attack controllers in house, we can facilitate face-to-face briefs and debriefs, which significantly improves coordination and learning.”
Although the overall mission of the surge was to build communication and cooperation skills across assets from multiple branches, each component had an internal goal.
“For maintenance, [the focal point was] generating sorties,” George said. “For the FS, it’s flying sorties, meeting learning objectives that are associated with large force trainings, close air support continuation training, on scene commander training as well as combat search and rescue integration. For the JTACs, [it’s] deployment spin-up, continuation training and CSAR integration.”
Meeting these objectives is key to ensuring the effectiveness of the 23d Wing and its partners in the arena of CAS and personnel recovery.
“Interoperability training is very important,” George said. “By training how we actually fight – with multiple assets, in multiple areas of operation, and with detailed integration – we are getting realistic training for what we expect to actually experience in a deployed environment. This also significantly improves learning and lets us highlight issues we might experience when different assets work together in an AO.”
According to George, the four-day surge was a success across the board.
“We had the majority of the [scenarios] go as planned, with detailed integration and very beneficial debriefs,” George said. “It was successful due to aircraft generation rate, the level of training received and sorties flown specifically in CAS and CSAR, the number of evaluations [the JTACs] completed and the number of controls they gave.
“The 23d Wing will continue to be seen as a front runner in the CAS and CSAR mission sets,” George continued. “By bringing other units in to Shark Flag, they are being incorporated into large CAS and CSAR scenarios that are normally only seen at Air Force level exercises.”