Northern Edge 2009 ends, highly successful

  • Published
  • By Marine Sgt Zachary Dyer
  • Northern Edge Joint Information Bureau
ELMENDORF AIR FORCE BASE, Alaska --  After two weeks of working together to increase the interoperability of the different military branches, 9,000 servicemembers, more than 200 aircraft and an aircraft carrier are heading their separate ways after having successfully completed the largest joint training exercise in Alaska. 

Northern Edge 2009, one of the Department of Defense's premier military training events, was designed to better prepare warfighters from the different services to work together to respond to a crisis in the Asia-Pacific region. 

The exercise focused on increasing the communication between services, improving command and control, and helping warfighters understand the capabilities of each service. 

"Northern Edge is about joint interoperability training," said Navy Cmdr. Victor Weber, the Navy's lead planner for the exercise. "You have the services, that are separate -- in that they have their own ways of doing business -- and a venue like this is an opportunity to get together and really work out the kinks in some of our differences." 

The exercise was heavily focused on air operations, with aircrew participating in defensive air operations, close air support, air interdiction of maritime targets and personnel recovery missions. Missions also included ground and maritime operations, incorporating a Navy SEAL team and the USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) aircraft carrier into the training. 

"These are perishable skills that the military tries to keep current on," said Jeff Fee, the exercise director for Northern Edge. "There's a refresh rate that all these people need to keep practicing at. Services tend to train in their own stovepipes, and exercises like Northern Edge give them the opportunity to get out and train the way they would fight in the real world -- together." 

Northern Edge is one of a family of exercises for U.S. Pacific Command units that is intended to focus on the tactical level of military operations. Alaskan Command hosted the exercise because of the unique training areas located in Alaska. Between the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex and the Gulf of Alaska, participants in Northern Edge had about 120,000 square miles to train in, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Dana T. Atkins, ALCOM and 11th Air Force commander. 

To increase the scope of the exercise and simulate a full-scale battle, Live-Virtual-Constructive operations were added to the exercise. L-V-C operations allowed aircrews in nine different time zones to participate via flight simulators. This allowed training sessions to take on a size and sphere that would have been logistically impossible otherwise, according to Atkins. 

In the end, a large part of the U.S. military forces in the PACOM theater walked away with a valuable joint training experience under their belts, according to Fee. 

"The joint services have gotten to the point where they understand that they are totally reliant on each other's capabilities," said Fee. "So they've decided that training together has become that much more important."