Dover Airmen support Hickam exercise

  • Published
  • By Maj. Jim Shepard
  • 436th Operations Support Squadron
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  Three Team Dover Airmen recently joined more than 600 joint warfighters during Exercise Pacific Sentry 16-3. As opposed to a traditional exercise with real tanks, airplanes, and ships attacking real targets, Pacific Sentry 16-3 was a Command Post Exercise in which participants controlled virtual assets to execute a classified war-game in the Pacific Command area of responsibility.

Col. Doug Hall, 436 Operations Group commander, Maj. Jim Shepard, 436 Operations Support Squadron chief of wing airlift operations, and Airman 1st Class Forrest Davis, 436 Communications Squadron knowledge manager, deployed to Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, for ten days as members of the Director of Mobility Forces team.

Brig. Gen. John Healy, 618th Air Operations Center mobilization assistant to the commander, acted as the senior air mobility officer for exercise commanders and flag officers making decisions during the war-game. Hall, Shepard and Davis acted as Healy’s deputy director of mobility forces, executive officer, and knowledge manager, respectively.

"For my first command post exercise, Pacific Sentry was an awesome ten-day experience,” Shepard said. “While fighting a war in the largest theatre in the world, it was abundantly clear to everyone that a failure of the mobility mission would gravely impact our ability to win a Pacific war. Not only was the exercise educational for all of us, but working with the mobility experts to help project rapid global mobility and win a war turned out to be a very rewarding experience."

The Director of Mobility Forces team worked around the clock to advise the Commander of Air Forces and the Joint Force Air Component Commander, and were also a conduit of information ensuring United States Transportation Command and Air Mobility Command were effective in their role to support the combatant commander during the fight.

“This exercise exposed us to the inter-workings of Pacific Air Forces Air Operations Center and let our team work hard to arm Brig. Gen. Healy with the right information so he could advise the Joint Force Air component commander on the most effective use of mobility assets,” Hall said. “The hours were long but the education we received was invaluable as to how our Air Force would wage a war in support of the Joint Force commander in the Pacific theater.”