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The Atlantic Trident 2017 exercise was held at Joint Base Langley Eustis in Hampton Virginia from April 12 to 28. This joint training exercise featured the US Air Force, the Royal Air Force, and the French Armee d'laire. The exercise was hosted by the 1st Fighter Wing and focused on air operations in a highly contested battlespace with complex simulated adversary scenarios. The goal being enhanced interoperability through combined aerial campaigns.
Atlantic Trident first began in December 2015, with Eurofighter Typhoons from the UK and French Dassault Rafales flying alongside F-22s at Langley. The inaugural effort focused more on deploying the aircraft, and on how they could bed down and operate at a new base. This time around, however, the aircraft built on that knowledge base and immediately jumped into training. The F-35 Lightning II participated for the first time in the 2017 exercise.
While various exercises are held with allied and partner nations throughout the world, this exercise is one of the first to focus on greater integration of U.S. Air Force fifth-generation capabilities.
In a US Air Force interview, 1st Fighter Wing Commander Col. Peter Fesler said, “This exercise was designed to encourage the sharing and development of air combat TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) with our French and U.K. partners, against a range of potential threats leveraging U.S. Air Force fifth-generation capabilities. This is not only an opportunity to share the capabilities of the aircraft, pilots, and maintainers between our nations, but to build friendship, trust, and confidence that will improve our interoperability as we go forward.”
“Blue Air” which are the friendly forces in this exercise, featured the US Air Force F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II; the RAF Eurofighter Typhoon; and the FAF Dassault Rafale. “Red Air”which are the adversary forces, featured U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles from Mountain Home Air Force Base and T-38 Talons from Joint Base Langley.
In addition, the U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry provided command and control support and the KC-10 Extender aircraft from Joint Base McGuire Dix Lakehurst provided airborne refueling support during the exercise. The FAF brought their airborne refueling platform, the Boeing C-135FR.
The major goal of this exercise was to allow pilots to fly combat training missions to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures to defeat adversaries around the world. These anti-access/aerial denial missions, or A2AD, utilized U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle and T-38 Talon pilots as adversaries. The nature of A2AD missions provide a highly-contested environment where adversaries have the upper-hand, creating barriers that limit U.S. and allied efforts.
Approximately 225 U.S. Air Force, 175 Royal Air Force and 150 French Air Force service members participated in the exercise.
“We’ve been side-by-side together, the Brits, the French, and the Americans in air combat,” said Col. Fesler. “This exercise is an extension of that. I think this is an opportunity for us to continue to refine our skills, our tactics, techniques and procedures to fight the war that we all know is coming. We don’t know where, we don’t know when; but we know it’s coming, and we’ve got to be ready to fight together.”