by Staff Sgt. Heather Redman
12th Air Force (Air Forces Southern) Public Affairs
4/30/2014 - DAVIS-MONTHAN AFB, Ariz. -- The
largest personnel recovery exercise in the world helps foster
international relationships by combining joint, coalition, and
interagency partners.
Exercise ANGEL THUNDER is an annual exercise that supports the DoD's
training requirements for personnel recovery, but also helps in building
trust and relationships between joint, interagency, and coalition
partners. This year's exercise will occur from May 4-17 throughout
Arizona and off the coast of California.
Exercise ANGEL THUNDER provides opportunities for Air Combat Command,
along with all participants, to showcase not just personnel recovery,
but also joint force integration and interagency participation.
"Personnel recovery missions are often short term operations because
they are a response to a crisis situation," said Col. Sean Choquette,
Commander of the 563rd Rescue Group. "By conducting Exercises like ANGEL
THUNDER, we are working to build up relationships ahead of time and to
establish standard operating procedures so it's easier to execute the
mission than if the relationship did not exist and you have to build
trust along the way."
Exercise ANGEL THUNDER allows Air Forces to practice effective
integration as well as the application of air and space power in the
search and rescue missions.
"Through the exchange of tactics, techniques, and procedures, we are
able to learn from one another," said Choquette. "This helps us to
standardize across the board so we are operating with similar techniques
and capabilities with the partners that we have."
This year's participants in Exercise ANGEL THUNDER include members from
the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Navy, U.S.
federal agencies, Arizona state and local agencies, national volunteer
organizations, as well as participants from Canada, Colombia, France,
Germany, Ireland, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.
"Integration with other forces, sharing information, and building
relationships is the key piece to the success of the exercise," added
Choquette. "It's not about how each of the different forces execute a
recovery operation; it's about integrating multiple units and operating
together to complete a mission successfully. This type of early
integration will pay us back exponentially when we need to operate
together."
Exercise ANGEL THUNDER has been designed to facilitate interoperability
and the cross-culture sharing of tactics and procedures replicating the
full spectrum of operational environments common to all personnel
recovery forces. It allows participants to train together by integrating
their set objectives to meet their needs while conducting the planning
and execution of the exercise themselves and finally, and most important
sharing the common lessons learned.
The focus of Exercise ANGEL THUNDER is maintaining the core competency
of rescue forces' high-end proficiency. Developing the command and
control of adaptable capabilities under the four core functions of
preparing, planning, execution, and adaptation, is a critical aspect of
the exercise. ANGEL THUNDER also reinforces the five phases of personnel
recovery; report, locate, support, recover, and reintegrate, through
exercising the full spectrum of personnel recovery operations.
Friday, May 02, 2014
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