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    Fort McCoy supports Northern Lightning exercise

    Fort McCoy supports Northern Lightning exercise

    Photo By Greg Mason | An Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon flies over the installation’s impact area May 15,...... read more read more

    FORT MCCOY, WI, UNITED STATES

    06.07.2019

    Courtesy Story

    Fort McCoy Public Affairs Office           

    BY CAPT. JOE TROVATO
    Wisconsin Department of Military Affairs Public Affairs

    The annual Northern Lightning exercise took place at Wisconsin’s Volk Field Combat Readiness Training Center (CRTC) from May 6-17. During the course of the exercise, several Fort McCoy training and range areas were utilized for live-fire training.

    Northern Lightning is one of seven Air National Guard joint-accredited exercises held at a CRTC. It is a tactical level, joint-training exercise replicating today’s air battle space with current and future weapons platforms. A variety of aircraft, including the F-16, EA-18, A-10, and KC-135, participated in the exercise.

    Col. David May, the commander of Volk Field CRTC, said Northern Lightning continues to grow each year because of the high quality of the exercise as well as the first-class training area and facilities that Volk Field offers.

    “We are thrilled to host the first of our two Northern Lightning exercises this year,” May said before the exercise. “Putting on an exercise of this magnitude takes an incredible amount of planning, hard work, and dedication on the part of our Airmen, and their efforts over the past months make this a realistic and rewarding training experience for all participants both in the National Guard and the active component. Our airspace, facilities, and ranges are second to none, and Volk Field is one of the premier counter-land training locations in the nation. Pilots will get to operate in a contested environment with adversary aircraft, electronic jamming, and simulated ground-based threats.”

    Units that participated in the 2019 exercise included the 115th Fighter Wing from Madison, Wis.; 103rd Air Control Squadron from Orange, Conn.; 163th Fighter Squadron from Fort Wayne, Ind.; 124th Fighter Wing from Boise, Idaho; 174th Attack Wing from Fort Drum, N.Y.; 179th Fighter Squadron from Duluth, Minn.; 175th Fighter Squadron from Sioux Falls, S.D.; 147th Air Support Operations Squadron from Illinois; and 209th Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron from Norfolk, Va.

    At Fort McCoy, Airmen participating in the exercise came to the post to help coordinate live-fire bombing runs on the installation’s impact area, according to the Directorate of Plans, Training, Mobilization and Security.

    Aircraft utilizing the training opportunities at Force McCoy included the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

    Located in the heart of the upper Midwest, Fort McCoy is the only U.S. Army installation in Wisconsin.

    The installation has provided support and facilities for the field and classroom training of more than 100,000 military personnel from all services each year since 1984.

    Learn more about Fort McCoy online at https://home.army.mil/mccoy, on Facebook by searching “ftmccoy,” and on Twitter by searching “usagmccoy.”

    (Fort McCoy Public Affairs contributed to this article.)

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 06.07.2019
    Date Posted: 06.07.2019 14:58
    Story ID: 326043
    Location: FORT MCCOY, WI, US

    Web Views: 175
    Downloads: 0

    PUBLIC DOMAIN