GULFPORT AIR NATIONAL GUARD BASE, Miss. - Military units and federal agencies from across the United States have converged on south Mississippi to develop their personnel and enhance combat effectiveness during Exercise Southern Strike 15 at the Combat Readiness Training Center, in Gulfport, Mississippi, Oct. 27-Nov. 7.
Fifty-one units from 23 states are involved along with FBI and international observers.
Southern Strike's objective is to provide tailored, cost effective and realistic combat training for National Guard personnel in a joint and multinational environment. Units are provided a unique training experience tailored to meet their needs. National Guard assets from across the state of Mississippi greatly contributed to making the event possible.
"This is a Mississippi National Guard-led and planned and largely executed ‘war' that we're holding, and then we've invited Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and they've all shown up," said Col. Craig Ziemba, exercise director for Southern Strike 15.
Southern Strike is a two-week-long training event consisting of three main objectives. Each objective highlights a different capability. They involve riverine warfare, close air support and air-to-air combat while also incorporating en route casualty care, combat search and rescue, and suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses.
South Mississippi is the theater of operations. Riverine operations are along the Pearl, Jordan and Pascagoula rivers and coastal special operations missions along the barrier islands. Close air support missions are centered at the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, while the air-to-air portion was carried out over the Chandeleur Islands in the Gulf of Mexico.
"The main thing we provide here is tailored training at a very low cost. We talk to the units and see what they need to accomplish their training. We really like to find a way to say yes. We have great facilities, some of the best airspace anywhere. Units are able to fly in, train and fly back home when the mission is complete," said Col. John S. Ladner, CRTC base commander.
All of the training at Southern Strike was mission specific to each unit. Groups attending the exercise indicated the type of training they would need and the MSNG tailored scenarios to meet each need.
"We sell this region, not just CRTC, but what we call the ‘South Military Complex' to include Camp Shelby (Joint Forces Training Center), Stennis Space Center, CRTC, the Naval Construction Battalion Center and Keesler Air Force Base. When you put all that together, and add our airspace and water, it's phenomenal what we can do here," Ladner said.
An additional area of emphasis was the Crisis Response Element, which demonstrated for the first time the MSNG's ability to use only its organic capability to deliver and deploy a specialized special operations force. A C-17 aircraft from Flowood's 172nd Airlift Wing transported tactical watercraft from Stennis Space Center to Gulfport CRTC with an in-flight refueling from a Meridian-based KC-135 to simulate around the world travel. The watercraft were then airlifted to the Mississippi River by CH-47 Chinook helicopters with AH-64 Apache gunships of the Mississippi Army National Guard's 185th Theater Aviation Brigade providing support. The MSNG also provided intelligence reconnaissance and surveillance (ISR) with RC-26 and UH-72 aircraft.
The Crisis Response Element demonstrated the ability of the Mississippi National Guard to "rapidly pick up and move a special operations top tier team anywhere in the world," Ziemba said.
Southern Strike, in its third year, has grown every year and has proven to be an invaluable training asset to active duty and well as National Guard units.
This cost-effective training utilizes the CRTC to lodge and feed troops. It allows commanders more fiscal flexibility to ensure effective training for the price. The experience is unique because it provides multiple units the chance to train together in a real-world environment. Southern Strike 15 demonstrates the role the state of Mississippi continues to play in maintaining military readiness for future missions both stateside and abroad.