MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — The roar of jets taking off before dawn Tuesday signaled the end of a four-month deployment that transplanted more than 250 airmen from the arid New Mexico desert to rural northern Japan.
F-16 pilots with the 523rd Air Expeditionary Squadron began the long haul back home to Cannon Air Force Base at 3 a.m. Tuesday, with the rest of the squadron due to depart this week, said Col. Eric Best, 35th Operations Group deputy commander.
The Cannon aviators and maintainers were part of an Aerospace Expeditionary Force rotation to backfill for deployed personnel and other resources from the Pacific theater, Best said, providing air power for real-world taskings, if needed, and a deterrent effect.
Cannon’s departure doesn’t leave a hole within Pacific Command, he added.
“The AEF cycle lasts four months, and other AEFs are now in place to pick up whatever shortfalls there are.”
Best called the deployment a “resounding success,” as it presented numerous training opportunities for both Misawa and Cannon pilots, maintainers, and even the support personnel who received the Cannon airmen.
Misawa’s 13th and 14th Fighter Squadrons borrowed targeting pods — hardware that finds and identifies ground targets and guides precision bombs to those areas — from Cannon’s F-16s and trained with them, Best said.
“We hung them on our airplanes,” he said. “That allowed us to expand into a new mission that we are training for right now.”
The approximately 40 Misawa fighter jets are being outfitted with the same pods as part of upgrades for Common Configuration Implementation Program, or CCIP.
Another unique training opportunity for Misawa’s pilots was flying with Cannon’s forward-air controllers — fighter pilots qualified to identify and coordinate ground targets. Since the 35th Fighter Wing isn’t tasked with that mission, its fighter pilots aren’t certified as such, but they still need to train with those experts because “it might be something we do in combat,” Best said.
On the flip side, Cannon’s pilots conducted dissimilar air combat tactics training with Japan Air Self-Defense Force F-2s and U.S. Navy F/A-18s, and benefited from working with Misawa’s 610th Air Control Flight, which provides information from the ground on other airborne threats through radar surveillance and other means, Best said.
Challenges to hosting such a large deployment ranged from finding enough billeting to ensuring dining facilities could accommodate an extra 250 people every day, Best said.
“We don’t feel like we had any big stumbles,” he said. “We took care of them as our own. They operated as an integral part of the wing.”
