Devil Raiders exercise rapid global mobility skills at C-Strike

Over the course of ten days Airmen from the 621^st Contingency Response Wing utilized dirt runways and commercial airports to test their rapid global mobility skills during Exercise Cerberus Strike 16-02.

C-Strike is a contingency response centric mobility exercise occurring in locations throughout Colorado and Kansas. The exercise gave contingency response forces the opportunity to rehearse potential real-world situations by training with Army counterparts in cargo uploading and downloading on aircraft, communications, aircraft engine running off-loads, aerial port procedures and air mobility liaison officer operations.

“It’s our job in the CRW to push Air Mobility Command’s mobility mission to get passengers and cargo to the fight, and that’s what we tested here at C-Strike, said Lt. Col. Pat Rayner, 921^st Contingency Response Squadron commander. “We have aerial porters putting cargo on airplanes, maintainers working on the aircraft, and command and control coordinating take off times and communicating with the aircrews.”

Exercises like C-Strike are important for contingency response Airmen because they provide an opportunity for them to work out any potential issues in a training environment.

“An exercise like this gives us the opportunity to see what we need to work on and what we are successful at,” Rayner said. “During the exercise we could see the importance of communication, both internal and external. How we work with our counterparts and how we communicate with ourselves from an intermediate staging base to four forward staging bases is tested during C-Strike.”

The exercise featured three different airframes with aircrews from Travis Air Force Base, California, Dover AFB, Delaware and Peterson AFB, Colorado also Air National Guard units from Illinois and Montana participated.

Along with the various Air Force units the exercise included Soldiers from the 4^th Infantry Division, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team and the 43^rd Sustainment Brigade.

“We are blessed to have three different airframes here at C-Strike, we are working with C-5s, C-17s and C-130s,” Raynor said. “We are also working with air mobility liaison officers tied into Soldiers from the 4^th Infantry Division at Ft. Carson all in all creating an incredible joint exercise.”

“The exercise prepares contingency response Airmen to communicate more effectively with our joint counterparts and even our Air Force aircrew,” said Capt. David Nelson, 821^st Contingency Response Group executive officer. “C-strike also paints a picture on how to build a team that will forward deploy smaller teams to multiple locations.”

Contingency response forces are self-sufficient and can deploy with all the personnel, equipment and supplies to execute the mission, which make them valuable to AMC’s rapid global mobility mission.

“CR forces are the answer to the question how do I move a large volume of air freight to anywhere in the world” said Nelson. “CR Forces are important to AMC and rapid global mobility because our units have the ability to deploy within 12 hours of notification to an austere location, furthermore we can support operations ranging from combat operations to humanitarian aid.”

Throughout the exercise CR forces were tested on their self-sufficient concept and were able to use C-Strike to exercise their rapid global mobility skills.

“It’s been great seeing our Airmen out here actually doing the mission and how well they do it and how prepared they are,” Rayner said. “C-Strike has shown us we need to work on our communication, but at the same time we have learned the many aspects of our mission that we perform well at.”