News United States Air Force
 Mississippi Guard hosts Southern Strike exercisePublished April 27, 2023
                        
                        By Staff Sgt. Renee Seruntine
                        
                        
                        102nd Public Affairs Detachment
                **GULFPORT, Miss. (AFNS)  --**
                One of the U.S. Air Force’s newest concepts, **Agile Combat Employment**, is the focus of the Southern Strike 2023 exercise at the **Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center**. 
 
Approximately 2,000 U.S. military service members participated in the joint international combat exercise hosted by the **Mississippi National Guard**. 
 
During the two-week exercise, a combined force of **Air National Guard**, **Army National Guard**, Air Force, **Navy**, **Marines** and **Coast Guard** units trained to prepare for air-to-air combat, aerial refueling, aerial and ground transport and close air support.

Senior Airman Terrance Pernell, 4th Security Forces Squadron assistant unit deployment manager, maintains a security perimeter during exercise Southern Strike at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Miss., April 19, 2023.Senior Airman Terrance Pernell, 4th Security Forces Squadron assistant unit deployment manager, maintains a security perimeter during exercise Southern Strike at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Miss., April 19, 2023. The exercise focuses on Agile Combat Employment which aims to shift generation of airpower from large, centralized bases to networks of smaller, dispersed locations to complicate adversary planning. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman David Lynn)
            
            
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    Aircrew assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing sit in an F-15E Strike Eagle during exercise Southern Strike at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Miss., April 19, 2023.Aircrew assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing sit in an F-15E Strike Eagle during exercise Southern Strike at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Miss., April 19, 2023. The exercise focuses on Agile Combat Employment which aims to shift generation of airpower from large, centralized bases to networks of smaller, dispersed locations to complicate adversary planning. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman David Lynn)
            
            
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    Two F-15E Strike Eagles assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing prepare for takeoff during exercise Southern Strike at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Miss., April 19, 2023.Two F-15E Strike Eagles assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing prepare for takeoff during exercise Southern Strike at Key Field Air National Guard Base, Miss., April 19, 2023. The exercise focuses on Agile Combat Employment which aims to shift generation of airpower from large, centralized bases to networks of smaller, dispersed locations to complicate adversary planning. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman David Lynn)
            
            
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The exercise centers on emerging ACE tactics, techniques and procedures and multi-capable Airmen training. 
 
Army **special operations** forces were among the participants that conduct counterinsurgency, close air support, search and rescue, noncombatant evacuation and maritime special operations. International partners were also involved in air and ground training scenarios. 
 
“Agile Combat Employment is a method of employing our personnel in resources instead of going to one large main operating base,” said Col. Bryce Butler, exercise director. “We disperse our assets and forces throughout many different contingency locations as it confuses adversary planning.” 
 
The key to ACE is to spread out aircraft and supplies across multiple airfields rather than concentrating them in a few central locations to make it more complicated to target all of them.
 
“We disperse forces in order to complicate potential adversaries’ planning,” Butler said. “We have to have Airmen that not only know the job that they have been trained for but other jobs as well. When you disperse to those smaller bases and you have less personnel there, they have to be able to know many different jobs in order to be able to make the mission happen.”00:13
    
    

    
    
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        F-15E Strike Eagles assigned to 4th Fighter Wing, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., arrived for Southern Strike 2023 at Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center in Gulfport, Miss., April 18, 2023. The 4th FW will support the exercise as a fighter element during Southern Strike, a total force, multinational training event hosted annually by the Mississippi National Guard in Gulfport with distributed basing sites and complex scenarios designed to test and validate shared Agile Combat Employment concepts. (U.S. Army National Guard photos by Spc. Benjamin Tomlinson)





The annual exercise provides valuable training scenarios to prepare fighters for various threats and enhance their knowledge of the ACE concept. 
 
“Southern Strike provides us the opportunity to go to multiple contingency locations because we have a lot of small airfields around here that will be very illustrative of what we’ll find inside of the South Pacific,” said **Brig. Gen. Anthony Stratton**, the commander of the 176th Wing, Alaska ANG. “We have the water here as well, so we can get our forces out there working together in a cohesive environment.” 
 
ACE relies on multi-capable Airmen to recover, refuel, reload and perform maintenance to aircraft. This ensures they are ready to rapidly deploy a proactive plan of operation to boost resilience and survival while generating combat power. 
 
“Multi-capable Airmen are doing jobs that are not in their specific specialty code, things like marshaling airplanes, helping to fuel airplanes, providing perimeter security, ingesting data, analyzing it and pushing it back out,” Stratton said. 
 
“We may have to cover great distances, and so, no matter where we are in the future with our adversaries, whether they be in Eastern Europe, in the Pacific or wherever else, we have to be ready to employ this concept and remain agile so that if we’re detected and targeted, we’re able to redeploy to different locations using the ACE concept,” said Maj. Gen. Barry A. Blanchard, assistant adjutant general - air, MSG.LR 



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