493rd Fighter Squadron wraps up major exercise

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman David Dobrydney
  • 48th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, England --  The 493rd Fighter Squadron recently participated in the largest airborne exercise in the United Kingdom.

Operation Joint Warrior brought together units from the U.S. and Swedish air forces as well as aircraft and surface vehicles from the British Royal air force, army and navy.

The goal of the exercise was to practice coordination between various armed forces against a common foe, said Capt. James Farrow, 493rd FS flight commander and project officer for the exercise.

Each mission for the two-week exercise began with an air tasking order listing the assets required, where they were required and the targets to be dealt with. The participating forces then had 24 hours to coordinate their assets and come up with a plan for destroying the targets.

"The fact that there's no one home station for this exercise makes it very difficult to coordinate because we only have one day," said Captain Farrow. "There's dozens of aircraft airborne, and we have to come up with an overall game plan to kill these targets without getting killed ourselves; all simulated of course."

During the missions, the 493rd FS pilots acted as escorts, going in ahead of the main force to clear an area of simulated hostile forces so the strikers, usually RAF Tornados, could go in to simulate bombing the targets.

The Swedish air force portrayed the hostile forces. Their Gripen fighters provided another dimension to the training, as most of the American pilots had not flown against them before.

"It's really nice to get some dissimilar aircraft training instead of just flying against each other" said Captain Farrow.

While Captain Farrow said coordinating multiple assets can be a challenge, he added that's what makes the training realistic.

"The biggest thing to take away from this is mission planning," he said. "In case we have to go to war in a similar environment ... you wouldn't have all the aircraft at one base and we'd have to coordinate the same way."