U.S. Air Force, French, British forces finalize exercise

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Aubrey White
  • 633rd Air Base Wing Public Affairs
JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. --  United States, United Kingdom, and French Service members partnered for the inaugural Trilateral anti-access/area denial exercise at Langley Air Force Base, Dec. 2 - 18.

The exercise, hosted by the 1st Fighter Wing (FW), focused on procedures in a highly-contested operational environment through a variety of simulated adversary scenarios. During the final week of the Trilateral, U.S. Air Force, Royal Air Force and French air force officials gathered to discuss the intent and overall impact of the exercise.

"This is a fantastic opportunity for the European air forces to get alongside the United States Air Force ... to start delivering true interoperability across Europe and across NATO," said RAF Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford.

According to Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the exercise also allowed for the forces to train with the same type of interoperability, de-confliction and coordination process as they would normally use in the Middle East to prevent miscommunication, mistakes or bad decisions.

"The big benefit of this exercise is these three air forces have capability that many air forces don't," Welsh explained. "So being able to operate our aircrews, our maintenance crews, our intelligence support teams in preparation for a future operating environment that maybe more difficult than what we've been fighting in is really an important step to refocusing on that full-spectrum fight we have not been involved with in recent years, but is always a potential in the future."

"For the last 50 years we've been focused on an environment that is very permissive," Welsh said. "As a result, the legacy systems we've had in our Air Force that I think have made us great in the last 50 years have been very successful. We must modernize our air force so that we're great for the next 50 years."

French air force Deputy Chief of the Air Staff Gen. Antoine Creux reinforced Welsh's comments in saying the Trilateral is integral to prepare for a conflict where air superiority will not be granted.

More than 500 Service members, consisting of approximately 225 personnel from the USAF, 175 from the RAF and 150 from the FrAF, gained an understanding of the logistics, support requirements, capabilities, tactics, techniques and procedures associated with the integrated operation of coalition front-line fighters during the exercise.

"We have lots of lessons that we can share with respect to this activity, and [the other services] are all ears," Welsh added. "What's very clear in lessons learned from this exercise is that the technical capability that we bring to the fight will continue to drive success or failure. Air forces that fall behind the technology curve will fail and we can't let that happen."