LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –Air Combat Command’s annual personnel recovery, and combat search and rescue exercise, Angel Thunder 2013, will take place April 7-20 at Davis-Monthan AFB.
Angel Thunder is the world’s largest personnel recovery exercise, integrating sister services and numerous state, national, multinational and interagency assets dedicated to saving lives in incredible circumstances.
The exercise simulates a comprehensive government response to isolated citizens, and echoes the Air Force rescue motto, “That others may live.” Angel Thunder is the closest civilians can get to experiencing a personnel recovery mission without being part of an real-life rescue.
One portion of the exercise, Resolute Angel, will test local, state and federal organizations with a catastrophic, mass-casualty event reaching from the Grand Canyon to the New Mexico/Arizona border to Tucson, Ariz. This scenario will run April 11-13.
Additionally, various events will take place April 15-19, including high-altitude and urban-irregular warfare, contested operations and air-sea battles. These scenarios will take place over 40,000-square-miles of Arizona and New Mexico to simulate U.S. Embassy and federal employee recoveries. The air-sea battle scenarios will span Arizona and the California coast.
