By Master Sgt. Paul Fazzini
Air Mobility Command Public Affairs

SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (AMCNS) – The Air Force will deploy its newest flag-level exercise Oct. 13, and according to Maj. Gen. Christopher A. Kelly, commander of the Air Mobility Warfare Center at Ft. Dix, N.J., Eagle Flag will target expeditionary combat support skills and test them to the maximum extent possible.

Eagle Flag, which is to the expeditionary combat support community what Red Flag is to the fighter community “will bring expeditionary combat support leadership to Ft. Dix (where) we will test their abilities to go out and establish an air base in an austere location,” he said.

Because this is the inaugural Eagle Flag exercise, “there are a lot of unknowns,” said General Kelly. “The primary objective will be to test the team that will come together, led by the Combat Support Group from Cannon AFB (N.M.) in an expeditionary role (to establish) an air base and to give us a good, solid foundation in the framework for follow-on Eagle Flag exercises.”

To accomplish these objectives, planners from the AMWC, the lead for developing Eagle Flag, will draw from expeditionary combat support specialties from throughout the Air Force. Tasking to units for Eagle Flag will be run just like actual deployments, through the Air and Space Expeditionary Force Center at Langley AFB, Va.

In the past, AMC focused on its own combat support specialties in a similar exercise called Phoenix Readiness, but the Air Force didn’t have a service-level ECS training environment, similar to the Red, Blue, and Silver flag series of exercises that all major commands could tap into.

“The Air Force recognized that Phoenix Readiness provided a good foundation and a good way to transition from that major command-focused expeditionary combat support experience to a larger Air Force focus,” said General Kelly.

Using Phoenix Readiness as the foundation for Eagle Flag has allowed the Air Force to get this exercise off the ground sooner than if it had to be built from scratch, and has saved money and resources in the process. But according to General Kelly, the biggest thing is that it can be done sooner.

According General Kelly, Eagle Flag planners will incorporate experiences and lessons learned from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom into the exercise scenarios.

With Eagle Flag occurring in participants’ AEF “spin-up” window, the long term vision would be to link it with other exercises or other things that might be going on within the Air Force to give participants a more realistic feel to the exercise itself.

“This is in the long future, not in the near term,” said General Kelly. “But, I think it’s easy to understand that you could link an Eagle Flag with perhaps a Red Flag or a weapons school mission employment exercise out on the Nellis (AFB, Nev.) Range for instance.

“I think that kind of situation would give young men and women in the Air Force exposure to different environments, different climates, different challenges, and better balance their approach to this expeditionary combat support experience so they can face bigger challenges any where in the world, in different environments.”