Airmen from Langley arrived by Chinook helicopter in the woods inside Fort Eustis this week. The three-day exercise is designed to train a broad range of airmen in how to live and work in the field.
“You have individuals from medical. You have individuals from finance. You have some from a civil engineering squadron and then security forces,” said Staff Sgt. Barak Bruenewald. “So this is a wing-broad exercise to show that anyone, regardless of the career field, can prove to be a really effective unit.”
People who typically work in areas such as payroll, medicine and fire fighting set up camp inside Fort Eustis at Joint Base Langley-Eustis.
“My job, we just kind of stay in the office the whole time,” said Airman Adryon Evans, who works in cyber operations. “Learning a bunch of skills that my job doesn’t normally require, it’s actually pretty good - working with people you normally wouldn’t associate with.”
Wednesday, they were given maps and compasses so they could plot their way through the Fort’s advanced land navigation ranges.
Agile Combat Employment is part of an Air Force-wide initiative designed to make the Air Force more mobile as the military looks how it might operate against a near-peer competitor such as China.
“If we are ever in a conflict with a near-peer adversary, we might be in a situation where GPS equipment and other means of navigation will not be readily available,” said Bruenewald.
“So having the knowledge to be able to traverse without those kinds of devices will be really required.”
This is the first year for the three-day exercise. Other training planned during the exercise include using heavy equipment and field logistics.
