VOLK FIELD AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, Wis. – More than 50 U.S. Airmen and 13 units from the Air National Guard Region V participated in exercise Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear, or CBRN, High-intensity Operational Preparedness, or CHOP, North 2026, April 15-22.
Emergency management exercises for Region V, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, have been conducted for more than 20 years. This iteration of the exercise, CHOP North 26, was held at Volk Field Air National Guard Base in Wisconsin and focused on two major areas.
“We’re focusing a lot more on our old school CBRN [training],” said Master Sgt. Steven Jefferies, the lead planner for CHOP North 26, assigned to the 183rd Wing in Springfield, Illinois. “So, it’s more base defense emergency management planning and base defense operations.”
Another focus of CHOP North 26 is small team tactics. Working in teams mirrors realistic emergency management responses and allows members of each unit to become familiar with one another.
“The second part is the four-person team,” Jefferies said. “That’s down range CBRN where they go in, and they find a target, they go through all of their identifying and sampling, and then push [the results] out.”
CHOP North 26 provides fine-tuned, realistic and cost-effective training for Region V Air National Guard units. Some types of training that were completed included hazard identification, manual plotting, equipment familiarization, decontamination operations, land navigation, combat skills, physical fitness and mental fitness.
The full-scale exercise and culminating event for CHOP North 26 took place at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, and included emergency operations center operations, CBRN control cell operations, reconnaissance teams for hazard identification, operations under limited communications, recovery after attack, site survey and assessment, close-quarters combat and individual mission command.
Security Forces from the 183rd Wing, Explosive Ordnance Disposal from the 115th Fighter Wing in Madison, Wisconsin, and the 54th Civil Support Team in Madison, Wisconsin, supported the Airmen participating in CHOP North 26 with multi-capable training.
“Training like CHOP North is critical to national defense because you don’t get training like this at home station,” Jefferies said. “Events like this allow us to bring 17 wings together where we have the numbers to perform exercises and do training that we can’t receive at our home station.”