Utah Guard joins African Lion exercise

Story by Master Sgt. Grady Fontana
U.S. Marine Forces Africa

AGADIR, Morocco, (5/15/10) -- More than 150 members of the joint task force conducting Exercise African Lion 2010 arrived here to mark the beginning of the exercise May 14.

The Utah National Guard alog with Marines, Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen will participate in the largest exercise in U.S. Africa Command's area of activity.

"I know I have the best [service members] of what each unit can offer," said Col. Anthony Fernandez III, the Combined Joint Task Force commander for the exercise, while addressing the members of the task force. "This is a complicated exercise, and it is a large exercise; I know we're going to be successful."

Exercise African Lion, a U.S. Africa Command-sponsored exercise, will include various types of military training including command post, live-fire training, peacekeeping operations, disaster response training, intelligence capacity building seminar, aerial refueling/low-level flight training as well as a medical, dental, and veterinarian assistance projects and exercise related construction to run concurrent with the training.

Various units from the Marine Corps Forces Africa and Marine Corps Forces Reserve along with the Tennessee Army National Guard and Naval Forces Africa will conduct bi-lateral training, weapons qualification training and peacekeeping operations training with units from the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces.

Marines and aircraft from the Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 234 and 11th Tactical Aviation Command will conduct various ground courses as well as aerial refueling and low-level flight training with their counterparts in the Royal Moroccan Air Force.

Concurrent with the exercise, U.S. military professionals from the Utah Army and Air National Guard, which is joined with Morocco in the National Guard's State Partnership Program, will provide medical, dental and veterinarian assistance to the local residents in and around the community of Taroudant.

The exercise is an annually scheduled, joint, combined U.S.-Moroccan exercise. It brings together nearly 1,000 U.S. service members from 16 locations throughout Europe and North America with more than 1,000 members of the Moroccan military.

African Lion is designed to promote interoperability and mutual understanding of each nation's military tactics, techniques and procedures.

The exercise is scheduled to end on or around June 9. All U.S. forces will return to their home bases in the United States and Europe at the conclusion of the exercise.

The last African Lion exercise occurred in May 2009 and involved about 1,400 Moroccan and U.S. military personnel.