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Pacific AWACS Squadrons Raise the Bar

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ANDERSEN AIR BASE, Guam --  Pacific Air Forces' two Airborne Warning and Control Systems  Squadrons, the 961st Airborne Air Control Squadron out of Kadena Air Base, Japan, and the 962nd AACS out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, joined together to form a single super squadron during exercise Valiant Shield 2014 Sept. 15 through 29, in and around Tinian and Guam.

The AWACS was created for the large force employment of air power like that exercised during Valiant Shield. 

"Valiant Shield has been one of the most difficult and challenging exercises our Pacific AWACS squadrons have faced in years," said Lt. Col. Frederick  Coleman, 961st AACS commander. 

Despite these challenges, both the operations and maintenance crews for the Pacific AWACS team were able to achieve a number of impressive feats. 

"One of the most notable accomplishments wasn't achieved by the ops squadrons at all," said Coleman, "It was the AWACS maintainers who really stole the show." 

After one of their two jets broke on the first day of the exercise, the AWACS maintainers came together to develop a plan to turn the single remaining jet in half of the normal required time. 

"Because of these maintenance heroes, we were able to turn the jet in under two hours and fly two missions a day with the same jet," Coleman said.  "This is an unbelievable and unprecedented event in the AWACS community, and it's a capability that we need to continue to utilize and refine in order to meet the ever-growing demand for Air Battle Management."

Air Battle Management is the synergistic product of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance and command and control at the tactical to operational level of war.  Put otherwise, Air Battle Management is the function that brings the air war together. 

"Without Air Battle Management the air war is like a football team without a quarterback; there's nobody calling the plays or passing the ball," Coleman said.

The goal of Valiant Shield 2014 was to bring together more than 18,000 service members, 200 aircraft and 19 surface vessels to developing a "pre-integrated" joint force built from habitual relationships. This force builds interoperable and complementary cross-domain capabilities and benefits from realistic, shared training enhancing the flexibility to develop new tactics, techniques, and procedures as operational conditions dictate. Such forces will provide the deterrence and stabilizing effects of a force-in-being, ready at the outset of a contingency without delays for buildups or extensive mission rehearsal.