Reserve Citizen Airmen from the 307^th Bomb Wing, along with their active-duty counterparts in the 2^nd Bomb Wing, joined forces with the 940th Air Refueling Wing to participate in an Agile Combat Employment (ACE) exercise here Aug. 8-15.

The ACE concept presents a layer of unpredictability for adversaries by employing aircraft in non-traditional, decentralized environments.

“The big thrust of this is we want to regularly exercise the fact we can operate from areas other than our main home station,” said Lt. Col. Courtney Hancock, 343rd BS Commander, “The Agile Combat Employment construct is a big Air Force idea where they want to forward deploy units to operate out of bases they are not used to operating out of.”

Beale Air Force Base was an ideal location for the mission because it has a runway large enough to launch and land B-52s, but it does not have the maintenance infrastructure to support the airframe.

While Beale AFB could not provide operational needs for the B-52, its home units did step in with logistical support.

“We had a lot of home-grown support from the 940th Operations Support Squadron and the 314th Air Refueling Squadron out here,” said Hancock. “They were integral in helping us bed down, getting us the tanker support we need, and getting us set with a lot of the home station support here.”

Beyond logistics, it was up to the Total Force Integration (TFI) package from Barksdale AFB to make the mission happen.

The 343^rd Bomb Squadron and 307^th OSS, Air Force Reserve units, worked with the active-duty 96^th BS and 20^th BS to take care of the air mission.

Back on the ground, the Air Force Reserve’s 707^th Maintenance Squadron teamed with one of the active-duty Air Force’s newest units, the 20^th Bomb Generation Squadron, to ensure the jet remained operationally ready.

While TFI packages are part of daily operations at Barksdale, putting the units into the ACE concept at Beale highlighted their agility and adaptability.

“This exercise is also practice to showcase our capabilities as a unit to deploy with a small maintenance package to a location that isn’t specifically tailored toward the B-52,” said Tech. Sgt. Dylan Arnold, a maintainer assigned to the 707^th MXS.

The new location and the limited resources provided realistic training opportunities that simulated deployed conditions, allowing Airmen to hone their skills in an unfamiliar environment.

“Home station has everything needed to ensure the B-52 mission is successful day in and day out,” said Arnold. However, this ACE mission creates an environment that isn’t geared toward the B-52, so finding a way to ensure fixes are done efficiently and safely is a new challenge that expands our capabilities and planning for the future.”