KADENA AIR BASE, Japan. -- Airmen assigned to the 18th Wing, 355th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron and 355th Fighter Generation Squadron staged out of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Japan to test their ability to rapidly deploy assets from an austere location during a routine 18th Wing readiness exercise at Kadena Air Base, Japan, May 6-9, 2025.
Airmen from several units performing duties outside their career fields in an unfamiliar environment demonstrates the U.S. Air Force’s agile combat employment concept in action.
The goal of ACE is to empower units to generate sustainable airpower in any environment, adding flexibility and dexterity to capabilities.
“We can be as effective as we've been due to the integration of mission ready Airmen that are supporting us,” said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Erik Gonsalves, 355th EFS commander. “Command post personnel are helping us with our unit command center and the 18th Communications Squadron helped set up all this equipment so we can stay connected with command and control; all of those things provide us the opportunity to work together as a team.”
With the assistance of expeditionary communications specialists, the mission ready Airmen employed condensed communication equipment capable of generating secure lines of communication in austere locations which is necessary to call for supplies and receive instructions and information from Wing leadership.
This exercise embodies the ACE concept by training Airmen to do mission critical tasks outside of their usual specialty while operating in a more compact team.
“They've all been pretty excited to learn each other's jobs,” said Senior Airman Kyle Owens, 18th Communications Squadron expeditionary communications specialist. “These teams can accomplish the mission anywhere as long as they have the camaraderie, openness and vulnerability to learn and operate outside of their comfort zone.”
Learning from planned and executed operations, the 18th Wing will continue to flex its enhanced operational abilities to respond to real world scenarios as the Keystone of the Pacific.