U.S. personnel recovery and Combat Air Force assets throughout the country convened at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz., for the first execution of Red Flag-Rescue May 5-19, 2018.
Red Flag-Rescue, previously known as Angel Thunder, is a joint-force exercise that provides realistic combat training in a contested, degraded and operationally limited CSAR environment.
“The purpose of the name change is to solidify that this is a Combat Air Force, Flag-level exercise for Dynamic Targeting focused on isolated personnel or survivors,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Cunningham, Detachment 1, 414th Combat Training Squadron commander.
Red Flag-Rescue is the only exercise focused on all five tasks of personnel recovery that is accredited by the Joint National Training Capability, a Department of Defense initiative that ensures combat forces have gained experience operating jointly before deploying to theater.
“Red Flag-Nellis was originally created to give fighter pilots their first 10 combat missions in a large force exercise before deployment to contingency operations,” Cunningham said. “Red Flag-Rescue adopts this heritage as a subset of RF-N by providing joint forces their first 10 CSAR missions in a large force exercise. Contested CSAR operations can only be conducted by a full complement of forces capable of fighting into and out of the survivor’s location.”
More than 20 units from the U.S. Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy collaborated for the two week exercise.