Courtesy Photo | U.S. Air Force mission sustainment team Airmen assigned to the 137th Special...... read more read more
Subscribe
A mission sustainment team of Airmen with the 137th Special Operations Wing, Oklahoma Air National Guard, participated in exercise Sentry South-Southern Strike 2025 at the Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center, Mississippi, Jan. 27-Feb. 5, 2025.
As part of a combined force of approximately 500 members of the Army and Air National Guard and units with the U.S. Navy, Marines and Coast Guard, they participated in training missions to prepare for contingency response operations, aeromedical evacuation, security forces airfield protection, specialized fueling operations, and rotary aviation medical evacuation and airlift.
The primary skills the team exercised were mission generation, movement and maneuver and troop sustainment to support Air Force Special Operations Command assets in austere locations. Their mobile forward operating site setup supports aircrew, a tactical operations center, and 45 Air Commandos. The team provided sustainment, austere refueling, intelligence and agile processing, exploitation and dissemination for aircraft, including a 137th SOW MC-12W aircraft and operations Airmen.
“The Airmen had to identify a forward operating site with an airfield to support mission generation out of sixteen available sites,” said Lt. Col. Morgan Mathis, mission sustainment team commander. “They planned, briefed and executed the movement of their supplies and troops to support two aviation units in addition to several other components to rapid troop movements. It is a lot of work to create this kind of environment where troops do not know what is coming next, and our big push within AFSOC is to figure out how small we can make these teams to rearm, refuel, provide communications and launch and recovery of aircraft.”
The team’s experiences during Sentry South-Southern Strike exercise will help create the blueprint on how AFSOC will build trainings and team configurations moving forward.
One unique aspect of the 137th SOW team was that they had both an engineer and an airfield manager to survey landing sites. They both can conduct landing zone safety officer clearance of landing sites to include grass and dirt landing strips and roads for aircraft.
“The 137th SOW mission sustainment team can work with any aircraft to accomplish mission success with AFSOC assets, and we have had a variety of mission partners help us accomplish this proof of concept in providing aircraft,” said Mathis.
He noted that the longevity of service members within the Oklahoma Air National Guard and within specific career fields “means we can build a team around skill sets and people. With our base being smaller, our unit building can be more maneuverable without interruption to installation operations. The continuity of this team is incredible, and compared to a 24-month turnover cycle, our team will be around to train the next team.”
This team was the first to do eight team movements and the first to do refueling as a part of mission generation. It supported joint force aircrews including a Navy HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter and an MC-12W assigned to the 137th Special Operations Wing for seven days without a resupply in addition to establishing a specialized refueling operation at a forward operating site for those aircraft, C-130J Super Hercules aircraft, and a Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft.
Airmen trained on scenarios including engine running onload and offload, simulated battle drills to maintain operations while under fire, hot and cold refueling during day and night operations, and movement of a total 170 passengers and over 126,000 pounds of cargo.
Aspects of the exercise, such as the specialized refueling operations training that included working with joint partners in the 271st Marine Wing Support Squadron using a fuel bladder to refuel aircraft in forward operating sites.
“The mission planning aspect was their biggest growth area,” said Chief Master Sgt. Adam Bout, a senior enlisted leader for the 137th Special Operations Wing. “When learning how to do a rehearsal of concepts drill, you go in depth into each phase of the operation. They briefed every detail of their part in the operation to the team. The end result of that drill is everyone knows what each person’s role is on the team and can know the steps they will be going through.”
The goal is to have the team be well aware of how each person is operating so in an emergency they know who to rely on for what. Bout acted as coalition and friendly forces during scripted and planned scenarios, and the team would have to network with him to gain information about the situation in the area, where they could travel, and to understand current threat level conditions.
“Our goal for an outcome was to get them to go through the scenario with certain desired learning objectives, and my role was to help them get to that conclusion on their own,” said Bout.
Airmen were confronted with direct armed engagement from enemy forces and had to request an exfiltration. Their communications were sabotaged, forcing the team to execute a course of action without support from a higher headquarters and without knowing exactly when help might arrive other than what was on the order for the operation.
“That was the culmination of the first mission,” said Mathis. “We continued into a second mission where their task was to support special operations task group requirements to move, secure and establish a contingency location and sustain a special operation task unit. They were working to establish a forward deploying location closer to simulated enemy strongholds to regain control of the area.”
This exercise trained on skill sets to enable rapid mobile deployment of mission support operations that allow forces to operate in locations that are temporary operating sites. The ultimate goal is to enable those small teams to support AFSOC assets in locations around the globe.
“Our upcoming participation in Tradewinds 2025 will help us reach that next step in the proof of concept for these small teams to conduct agile and mobile operations in support of AFSOC assets while cooperating with international partner forces,” said Mathis. “It will also have the benefit of putting all of these skill sets practiced at home to get equipment and troops from one place to another in real-world scenarios.”
| Date Taken: | 02.05.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 08.08.2025 20:16 |
| Story ID: | 545256 |
| Location: | MISSISSIPPI, US |
| Web Views: | 38 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 137th SOW Airmen conduct multi-skill operations for joint combat during exercise Sentry South-Southern Strike, by TSgt Brigette Waltermire, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
