8 MORRISVILLE, North Carolina Soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 130th Aviation Regiment (1-130 AB), 449th Combat Aviation Brigade participated in Emerald Warrior 2021, hosted by the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) Feb. 20 to March 5 at Camp Shelby, Missouri.
1-130th AB’s mission was to conduct detailed planning in close coordination with friendly ground units and execution of aerial reconnaissance and attack missions integrated with joint fires in a non-permissive environment.
Emerald Warrior is an annual, joint exercise that provides realistic and relevant training to prepare Special Operations Forces, Conventional Forces, Partner Nations, Interagency and Non-Governmental Organizations for crises and contingencies within different operational environments.
Rakvere s 14th Century castle helped to provide a scene of contrasting military tech from different ages Thursday, as 21st century Eurofighter Typhoons flew overhead, guided by ground controllers perched on the castle walls themselves.
A multi-national NATO Joint Terminal Attack Controllers (J-TAC) exercise dubbed Furious Wolf has been going on in and around both Tapa, Lääne-Viru County, home to NATO s Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) Battlegroup, and nearby Rakvere.
J-TACs are ground-based personnel who call in and coordinate airstrikes, often very close to the targets, with planes coming in at particularly low altitudes. The ongoing exercise, which has been running all week and continues into next week, involves not only the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF), U.K. personnel based at Tapa, and the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) flying out of Ämari air base, but also Lithuanian troops and Italian Air Force (Aeronautica Militare) jets based at Šiauliai, Lithuania.