by Casey E. Bain and Susan Hulker, Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team Public Affairs
AVON PARK, Fla. (AFNS) -- Joint and coalition warfighters improved their close-air support skills during an exercise led by Air Combat Command and U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Fires Integration and Interoperability Team Sept. 13.
Atlantic Strike 10-02 trained warfighters to find, fix, track, target, engage and assess both fixed and moving ground targets.
"Atlantic Strike is the quintessential air-to-ground training exercise that provides joint terminal attack controllers, joint fires observers and aircrews with the skills they need to effectively work together to achieve both lethal and non-lethal effects on the battlefield," said Marine Corps Maj. Jabari Reneau, the FIIT's Atlantic Strike exercise director. "This training will ultimately improve our combat effectiveness, while reducing the potential of fratricide and collateral damage during combat operations."
The exercise is to foster trust, increase confidence, and build vital relationships between key members of the air-to-ground team that will be essential to our forces' continued success today and on future battlefields, said Maj. Gen. David L. Goldfein, the director of Air Combat Command Air and Space Operations.
"Those important relationships are being forged here just like they must be on the battlefield when you can look your comrade in the eye and know you can count on each other," the general said. "That's what Atlantic Strike provides our warfighters."
More than 240 participants, CAS subject matter experts, observers and support personnel participated in the exercise, including representatives from all four U.S. services and our coalition partners from Canada and Slovenia.
"Atlantic Strike gave us an excellent opportunity to work with the U.S. military and other partners," said Canadian Forces Capt. Jonathan Cober, a forward air control cell instructor. "Our primary purpose at this exercise was the opportunity to look at the digital CAS technologies used here and to practice key air-to-ground linkages with some of our most important partners."
An added advantage of Atlantic Strike was the ability to focus on the training audience's needs.
"One of the strengths of Atlantic Strike is it is scalable and still able to focus on specific (training) objectives," General Goldfein said. "We're 100 percent focused and committed to the current fight as we keep an eye on the next threat. We know to accomplish that task we must be good joint partners, and this exercise is an example of that commitment."
The exercise improved joint air-to-ground training of Air Force and Marine Corps JTACs, Army JFO teams, the Air Support Operations Center and aircrew by incorporating intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets along with real-time, full-motion video to replicate a realistic and stressful combat environment, similar to operations in Afghanistan.
"Our primary goal was to get as many controls of live CAS aircraft as we could," said Senior Airman Benjamin Schmidt from Detachment 2, 1st Air Support Operations Squadron, Baumholder, Germany. "Atlantic Strike gave us the opportunity to work with a variety of aircraft and the entire air-to-ground kill chain just like we will in combat. This is as about as real world as it gets for us, and it will ultimately help us perform our mission downrange."