Photo By Staff Sgt. David Marquis | Spc. Takoda Anders, a UH-60 Blackhawk crew chief with the 1st Armored Division Combat...... read more read more
HOHENFELS, Germany — The steady thrum of helicopter blades cuts through the Bavarian sky as U.S. Army aviators train alongside multinational partners during Saber Junction 25, one of the largest combat training events in Europe this year.
Held at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, this world-class training event brings together more than 7,000 participants and 1,000 vehicles.
For Warrant Officer Noah Barnett, an AH-64 Apache pilot with the 1st Armored Division Combat Aviation Brigade, every mission, including this one, begins and ends with communication.
“Dudes on the ground rely on me for their safety,” Barnett said. “If we can do anything to get better through those after-action reviews, we’re going to take it, compile it, build from it, and just get better.”
Barnett said the exercise tests the brigade’s ability to keep communication flowing between the aircraft, senior leaders and ground forces maneuvering across rolling hills and thick forests. Reliable connections help prevent fratricide and ensure troops receive the support they need to seize their objectives.
“We need the friendly guys to know where we are [and] where we’re coming into,” he said. “The Apache’s role is to enable the ground force’s freedom of maneuver and to defeat the enemy so they can seize the objective.”
Although the live weapons remain simulated, Barnett said the missions are designed to be as realistic as possible. Crews use the same radios, mission planning processes, and tactics they would employ in combat.
“It’s a training exercise,” said Barnett. “It’s a fail-safe mission. We’re allowed to fail.”
Just down the flight line, Staff Sgt. Austin Phipps takes a different perspective from the back of a UH-60 Blackhawk. As a helicopter repairer and aircrew member of the UH-60, Phipps serves as a standardization instructor, ensuring his crew chiefs follow proper procedures while in flight.
“Our main task is CASEVAC [casualty evacuation] support for the multinational ground force,” Phipps said. “We sit in the back, we man the 240s [machine guns], and we provide close defense of the aircraft.”
He added, if an enemy threatened the aircraft during a medical evacuation, his crew would be ready to return fire while loading patients for transport.
Phipps, a former infantryman with nine years in uniform, said this is his first field exercise of this scale in an aviation unit. He believes Saber Junction 25 is valuable not just for the flying experience but also for building familiarity with Allied and partner units.
The training incorporates live and simulated operations, stretching units across southern Germany’s rugged terrain to test mobility, logistics, command and control, and combined arms maneuver.
Alongside U.S. formations like the 1st Armored Division Combat Aviation Brigade, multinational participants include soldiers from Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Spain, Belgium, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Germany, Italy and Slovenia. Poland provides the exercise’s higher command, underscoring the alliance’s commitment to interoperability and shared defense.
For Barnett and Phipps, the exercise is as much about people as it is about platforms. Both said the ultimate measure of success isn’t how many missions are flown or how many scenarios are completed — but how well they can safeguard the troops they support on the ground.
“It’s building experience, but it’s also building a rapport between the different multinational forces we have out here,” Phipps said. “When we have to do this in a real-world event, we’d be well trained and well fit to fight.”
| Date Taken: | 09.05.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 09.05.2025 17:12 |
| Story ID: | 547340 |
| Location: | BAYERN, DE |
| Web Views: | 12 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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