Interview with U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Joel Jackson, Exercise Mobility Guardian 2019 combined forces air component commander for Air Mobility Command, regarding the joint exercise, Sept. 17, 2019.

The exercise validated the Mobility Air Force’s readiness to conduct mobility operations in accordance with the current operations and threats described in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

Transcript

So, Travis is playing the Mobility Guardian a couple different ways. First of all, it’s with airplanes. C-5, C-17, KC-10s, are all participating in activities. But also, the Air Operations Center is here at Travis Air Force Base. So the CRG, through their A-MAS squadron is running the Air Mobility Division, and then the whole AOC. So all the operations that are being flown up in the state of Washington are actually being operationally controlled out of Travis Air Force Base. So the operation-level planning of which airplane is going to do which mission and how are we gonna meet our strategic objectives using the airplanes and ground forces that we have available to us, that planning’s being done out of Travis Air Force Base. The tactical-level planning of what each mission is exactly doing, how much gas it needs, how much, what time it needs to take off, that’s being done by the planners up at Fairchild. Well, this has been a great success so far, in my opinion. So, we as mobility forces don’t operate enough in that high-end environment, against threats, in an environment where we have to avoid threats while getting to an objective, and we’ve been able to do that in this exercise. And we’ve got some great learning points, some things that we maybe knew we didn’t do so well, we validated maybe some things that we thought we did better than, we found out that as well. But all-in-all, our airmen have done a fantastic job, both on the ground at the bases up in Washington and in the air as we’ve been executing the mission, to get it done. We’ve had some challenges, as with any war, there’s fog and friction, but it’s the great airmen that persevere and make it happen and we’ve seen that in Mobility Guardian as well. Well, I think that this has been a great opportunity for us to work together with all of our partners, our coalition, our foreign partners that are here, as well as our U.S. partners, the Army. So, we took off out of Pope Air Force Base and flew all the way across the country, doing low-level missions, avoiding our emitters in the tactical ranges, and then dropping the Army to do an airfield seizure. That’s not training that we get to do every day, and so that’s just a great, great learning environment, and the Navy is flying with us as well. And even within the Air Force it’s not just all active-duty, the Guard’s here, so this is a great opportunity for across services, across nations to come together in a real exercise that’s geared for mobility forces and it’s the only one of its kind and so that’s what’s so great about Mobility Guardian.