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BULLSEYE
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GREEN FLAG, from page 10 _____
sorties before they ew in environments
with real threats,” Davis said. “Today
Green Flag provides the CAS team with
the opportunity to get more than 10
days of combat in an extremely chal-
lenging dynamic ght before going and
doing the real thing in various areas of
responsibility.”
Davis remembers going through Green
Flag as a young lieutenant before deploying aviators to integrate their close air support surface integration excellence.
to Operation Enduring Freedom.
“ e training I received was critical
to being prepared for the mission down-
range,” Davis said. “Now that I’m on the
other side of the fence as a sta member,
I appreciate the opportunities that we are
able to provide even more.”
Green Flag exercise planners cra sce-
narios with the ultimate goal of emulating
real-life circumstances in a war zone. is
could provide opportunities for Airmen,
Soldiers, Marines and Sailors to partake
in a robust training experience, according
to Grant.
Just as instruments support each other
to create harmony in music, ground forces
and pilots must support each other during
Green Flag and in war to create harmony
on the battle eld.
“In the context of air and ground in-
tegration, the U.S. Air Force and Army
Feature
each bring a variety of capabilities and
weapons to any con ict,” Grant said. “In
garrison, Soldiers and Airmen typically
only get to train using their own weapons
and capabilities. It is only when they come
to a venue like Green Flag where they get
the opportunity to actually integrate with
the other services.”
Joint force exercises such as Green Flag
provide a unique venue for rotary wing
tactics with Army artillery res.
“Each community is an expert in their
own systems, but it’s a challenge to employ
each of them in a coordinated and safe
manner against an enemy in a con ned
space,” Grant said. “It’s hard to do well,
but when it can be done pro ciently, the
e ects are far greater than the sum of their
component parts.”
In an e ort to amplify the impact Green
Flag has on its participants, one aspect
exercise planners routinely discuss is the
“CAS Team” concept.
“It takes all of the players from ground
commander, res support o cer, through
air liaison o cer, joint terminal attack
controller, to the pilot to be working in
unison to achieve the goal of helping the
Army win,” Davis said. “ is happens to
be something really di cult to achieve
because there are so few places where the
Army and Air Force get to practice together
on this large of a scale. Green Flag is truly ational awareness. It takes lots of training
unique in its opportunity to integrate air
and surface e ects.”
As far as Air Force involvement, Green
Flag involves two different squadrons
from di erent bases: the 549th CTS from
Nellis AFB and the 12th Combat Training
Squadron, Fort Irwin, California. Together,
both units work with two distinct training
audiences to achieve the joint goal of air to
“For the 549th CTS at Nellis, there is
nothing austere about the environment -
nor should there be - because their training
audience is xed wing CAS aircrew who
would be operating out of an established
air eld in a combat environment,” Davis
said.
However, for Airmen from the 12th
CTS at Fort Irwin, their training audience
is the tactical air control party Airmen
who are working alongside Soldiers in
the eld.
“For TACP Airmen, it is not a ‘simu-
lated’ austere environment, it is a straight
up dangerous environment, with aggres-
sors, in the California high desert,” Davis
said. “ ey’re out there simply because
that is where the ght happens to be and
their job is to be ghting side by side with
the Army every step of the way.”
A key aspect of Green Flag for both
ground forces and aircrew members is situ-
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11August 12, 2016
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and experience to learn how to build one’s
level of expertise to the point that its second
nature to employ weapons.
“Situational awareness is not everything
— it’s the only thing,” Grant said. “To make
a truly complex situation, you need lots of
individual humans doing unpredictable
things.”
is allows service members to practice
making sense of the chaos that could occur
on the battle eld.
“With over 5000 Soldiers typically in
play on the ground at NTC, the complexity
of a Green Flag is real and invaluable for
aircrew and TACP Airmen to experience,”
Grant said.
Whether participating in Green Flag in
the skies or on the ground, the objective
remains the same: delivering the business
end of the mission to the enemy’s back
door.
“It’s about providing the best trained
force given the resources allocated to us,
to combatant commanders so that they
can support U.S. and allied interests
should the military need to be called on
in a given situation,” Davis said. “For
Green Flag, this means ghting a com-
plex battle against a force that is almost
our equal; if you can ght and win in
Green Flag, you can ght and win in
any ght.”