The Cooperative Cope Thunder exercise in Alaska will wrap up Saturday after more than two weeks of flying, but Misawa Air Base personnel will continue training until mid-August, military officials said last week.

“We’re staying an additional week to utilize the opportunity to train in the ranges in an effort to implement lessons learned during the exercise and to fine tune our flight tactics,” said Lt. Col. Stephen Williams, 35th Air Expeditionary Wing operations group commander for the exercise, in a written statement. Williams is Misawa’s 13th Fighter Squadron commander.

Participating in the largest multilateral air combat exercise in the Pacific are about 800 U.S. and coalition forces at Eielson Air Force Base, including 200 fighter pilots, maintainers and support personnel from Misawa. There are an additional 300 participants at Elmendorf Air Force Base.

“My overarching expectation for this exercise is to integrate U.S. and allied forces and learn to work together in an operational environment,” said Col. Nelson Cabot, 35th Air Expeditionary Wing commander for the exercise, and 35th Operations Group commander at Misawa.

Other participating forces include Canada, Sweden, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Bangladesh, Germany, Mexico, NATO and Sri Lanka.

“It’s great to see how synchronized everyone is,” said 35th Air Expeditionary Wing public affairs officer Capt. Teresa Sullivan, in a written statement.

“No matter what country they’re from ultimately the mission is flying and they’re all out their getting it done as a team.”

Language barriers, she added, are always going to be a factor in a joint-combined environment, but it hasn’t hindered operations during the exercise.

“This is good practice because one day we may be in a deployed [environment] with people who speak other languages and we’re learning how to work through these types of issues here in a training environment,” she said.

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