Air Mobility Command is overhauling its biggest competition to become its biggest training exercise.
The Air Mobility Rodeo, previously a competition among units across the command, will now become a large-scale exercise similar to Air Combat Command's Red Flag. The change is a way to use the money and time to exercise real-world scenarios that mobility crews are likely to face — supporting civil authorities and humanitarian assistance missions such as the August 2014 airdrop of supplies to stranded Yazidis on Mount Sinjar in Iraq.
"It's going to be an exercise driven with a [mobility air forces]-centered focus," Col. Michael Zick, the command A3 deputy director of operations, said in a July 23 interview. "We are not going to be a supporting player, we are going to be the supported player. It's going to be very much like a Red Flag. We will have some friendly rivalry, but we are shifting to exercising joint capabilities."
For the past 15 years, Air Mobility Command has been a supporting role in exercises and real-world deployment, executing missions such as carrying ground personnel and refueling combat aircraft. But as the global situation has changed, and airlift has become a focal point in many missions such as humanitarian relief, the command wants to exercise that ability, said Terry Johnson, the director of staff for the command's A3 operations directorate.
"The input we get is we spend so much time in a supporting role ... we have not had the opportunity to train in those mission sets we believe will be vital to national security in the future," Johnson said.
The command's ops tempo was so high that earlier this year AMC Commander Gen. Darren McDew canceled the command's premiere training exercise and competition — the Air Mobility Rodeo at McChord. The rodeo, which last took place in 2011 and cost about $2.5 million, included dozens of units across the command competing in their mission sets.
"During these challenging times, we need to be good stewards of our very limited funds and our Airmen's time," McDew said in a statement. "It's unfortunate, but given the circumstances, this is the right decision. We're looking forward to the possibilities of tailoring future Rodeo events, to ensure we're getting the most training and international partnership building value from this event."
Where the Rodeo was explicitly a competition among units, the command now wants units to train and fly together. The exercise will take place in 2017, though it isn't clear if it will return to McChord.
"It's based on real-world activities," Zick said. "Responding to the ops tempo day to day that our airmen are experiencing right now. We are looking to focus on an exercise primarily geared toward them and the capabilities they bring to the war fighters out there."
