Little Rock Airmen demonstrate massive airdrop, teamwork in joint exercise

Published Feb. 24, 2011
By 19th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

POPE AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. -- Nine Little Rock Air Force Base C-130s and twice as many aircrews, along with maintainers and planners from the base, participated in the most recent Joint Operation Access Exercise Feb. 9-12 at Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg, N.C.

JOAX is a two-week exercise to prepare the Air Force and Army to respond to worldwide crises and contingencies.

"It takes a team to execute this mission set ... operators, maintainers, mission support, joint users, military, civilian. When the team comes together, no matter what uniform they are wearing, it is awesome to behold," said Col. David A. Kasberg, Little Rock AFB's 19th Operations Group commander.

Participants included the 82nd Airborne Division; Air Force C-130 Hercules and C-17 Globemaster III aircraft; and various other Air Force support assets such as maintenance, security forces, contingency response group and tactical air control party members.

The full Air Force team, comprised of 15 C-130s and 13 C-17s from several bases, executed more than 150 sorties which included dropping 7,569 troops, 29 container delivery systems drops, 10 improved CDS drops, 27 heavy equipment drops, 29 air-land missions to dirt or semi-prepared landing zones and one aero-medical evacuation mission.

The Air Force was primarily exercising the Global Response Force, a scaled-down adaptation of what was formerly known as the Strategic Brigade Airdrop. Together, the joint partners met all of their training objectives, helped one brigade combat team achieve jump currency and prepared another BCT for its upcoming Operation Enduring Freedom deployment, said Maj. Marty Smith, 50th Airlift Squadron chief of standardization and evaluation and the lead C-130 planner for the exercise.

"The four annual JOAX exercises allow the Air Force to train in one of the most demanding mission sets we must be able to execute: large formation airdrop," said Colonel Kasberg.

Airdrop enables the Air Force to interact and work with its joint partners, refine its requirement-driven processes, and to drop many paratroopers in a single pass.

"Airdrop in the current war is limited to primarily single ship operations, and we are very good at that," the colonel said. "However, this tried-and-true large formation combat insertion mission set is of vital importance as an option to our senior leadership, so we must embrace the opportunity to practice it. Our friends and enemies around the world should take note of this incredible capability, one that only the United States possesses ... truly amazing."

JOAX is an opportunity for the division and its units to get back to the basics of the parachute assault that might have lost some focus after almost ten years of deployments. For the first time since 2008, the entire 82nd Airborne is back home at Fort Bragg, N.C., all at the same time.

A lot of planning and coordination goes into synchronizing the many moving pieces such as the division headquarters, four brigade combat teams, a combat aviation brigade, a fires brigade, support transportation units, and the many Air Force aircraft. Other nations have also been involved, such as paratroopers from the 3rd Royal Canadian Regiment.

The exercise exposes the aircrews to the way the Army operates so working with them is more familiar in the deployed environment, said Airman 1st Class Marcus Kraatz, a 61st Airlift Squadron loadmaster.

The exercise is "... important because it shows that we can deploy at a moment's notice and also sustain the fight," said Staff Sgt. Craig Neeley, a flight engineer from the 50th Airlift Squadron. "It shows that (the Army) can deploy their troops and get their troops to wherever they need to be," anywhere in the world.

(Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Alfano, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs, and Staff Sgt. Greg C. Biondo, 1st Combat Camera Squadron, Charleston Air Force Base, Va., contributed to this report.)