Air Force wargamers gathered in Alabama earlier this month to help leaders prepare for a sweeping series of exercises this summer that will be among the biggest in recent service history.
More than 60 participants took part in the Jan. 14-17 tabletop exercise at Maxwell Air Force Base, according to an Air Force release, including members of the Air Force Wargaming Institute, exercise planners, and senior leaders. The goal was to work through the decisions and challenges officials are likely to face in a few months when they start the so-called “Department Level Exercise series.”
“We conducted a risk analysis for the leadership to help show them where some of the blind spots may be, and also worked through some possible risk mitigation,” said Ronald Betts of the Wargaming Institute.
At the heart of the exercise series is Resolute Force Pacific, a major Pacific Air Forces-led exercise that will include nearly 300 aircraft spread across 25 locations. Officials want to integrate REFORPAC with other exercises, such as the multinational Talisman Sabre, Air Mobility Command’s Mobility Guardian, and the Air Force Warfare Center’s Bamboo Eagle.
Thousands of Airmen, hundreds of aircraft, and tons of equipment will need to move into and across the Pacific. Planning has been going on for months to include a conference in early October at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., cosponsored by the Air Force and U.S. Transportation Command. PACAF commander Gen. Kevin B. Schneider previously told Air & Space Forces Magazine that another planning conference wrapped up at the end of November, with planners going to “incredible levels of detail.”
The wargaming conference helped stress-test planners’ efforts by examining command and control, operations, movement, maneuver, and sustainment elements, and considering potential issues.
“It was more of a discussion of ‘If this occurs, what do we do next, and who has the authorities,’” Betts said.
More tabletop exercises are planned for later this spring, he added, and a final planning exercise is set for late March and early April at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.
The size of REFORPAC and the other planned exercises in the series may depend on whether Congress passes a fresh 2025 budget in time—an element that has also come up in planning.
“Through the course of our planning, we have options,” Schneider said in December. “So we take a look at, obviously, what we would like to do at the high end, if we get all the funding that we are asking for, through all of this to a lower end of the funding, we’ll still be able to make this happen at a pretty large size and scale. It’s kind of a TBD in terms of how the funding will flow through all of this. But I have optimism, because I think it has been well articulated, the why we’re going to do REFORPAC.”