Seymour Johnson leads the way in Razor Talon

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman David Lynn
  • 4th Fighter Wing Public Affairs

The Fourth Fighter Wing led the 4th quarter iteration of Exercise Razor Talon on Nov. 15-19, 2021, along the U.S. East Coast.

“Exercise Razor Talon is a quarterly Agile Combat Employment and large-force composite exercise that allows the Air Force to train in a fully-developed threat scenario environment with joint and combined warfighters across multiple domains,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Cates, 4th Operations Group deputy commander.

According to Cates, this iteration included Air Force C-17 Globemasters, tactical air control party (TACP) Airmen, Army AH-64 Apache helicopters and Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornets.

The 4th FW host, developed scenarios and flew both blue air and adversary support missions.

“Razor Talon provides a unique opportunity for joint integration between Air Force, Marine and Army units,” said Army 1st Lt. Emmanuel Gelvin, 1st Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, assistant battalion operations officer.

The exercise allows Airmen to work closely with sister services and train in a controlled environment in order to be prepared for real-world scenarios.

“Increasing interoperability of Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security components, even on a training basis, improves communications, organizational understandings and broadens our ability to act across service boundaries,” said Lt. Brendan Hughes, U.S. Coast Guard Sector North Carolina, chief of enforcement.

According to Marine Capt. Luke Stephenson, Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 553, weapons training officer, Exercise Razor Talon provides invaluable, realistic training for combat.

“We had to plan with each other to overcome obstacles and we debriefed together to learn from our mistakes so we could be better for the next event,” said Stephenson.