More than 300 Airmen from Air National Guard units across the country gathered at Guardian Center here for Global Dragon 2019, a biannual, ANG-led joint training exercise focusing on career fields across the mission support enterprise in as close to real-world conditions as possible.
During the two-week exercise, held May 26–June 8, 2019, Airmen from 59 units across 48 states and several locations overseas were able to accomplish required training tasks and maintain proficiencies with minimal or no simulation.
“Global Dragon 2019 was a success.” said Lt. Col. Joe Deese, Global Dragon officer in charge. “Units have said they had a top-notch experience, that they can’t get this training back at home, or the wide variety of instructors who have different skill-sets they wouldn’t normally be exposed to.”
One of the draws of Global Dragon is the ability to conduct training that would be cost prohibitive for units to host individually, or could not be performed at their facilities.
“Security forces Airmen were taught how to walk and shoot, how to shoot around and through barricades, that type of thing,” said Deese. “That’s training you cannot do on an Air Force installation. But now they have those skills they can take to a deployed location, if needed.”
Emergency management Airmen were able to perform the tasks required during a scenario, rather than describe how they would accomplish those actions.
“The biggest benefit was being able to see actual readings on your equipment instead of relying on exercise injects,” said Timothy Booth, bioenvironmental engineering lead cadre. “Responders were able to see exact response times of different radiation detection equipment and get some real world tactics on how to approach a scene. Our teams had less than an hour to identify and locate eight radioactive sources and check for the presence of any loose radiation contamination.”
Another milestone in this year’s Global Dragon is that it included joint partners who participated in instruction and exercises.
“The Marines were able to integrate with our emergency management folks and contribute their CBRNE capabilities and expertise,” said Deese. “We also had the Georgia Army National Guard fly Blackhawk helicopters to drop our security forces Airmen into a landing zone during the contingency portion of the exercise.”
Originally conceived as an exercise to train emergency management Airmen, Global Dragon has expanded far beyond that scope and now includes many different career fields across the mission support enterprise.