Air Force battlefield airmen and fighters and bombers have been using three towns in Louisiana to practice urban air strike skills. The towns of Deridder, Leesville, and Oakdale volunteered to let the Air Force conduct urban combat air support training—providing today’s real-world type environment. Such crowded urban areas have “made it difficult for controllers to coordinate with aircraft” to strike enemy forces and avoid killing civilians and inflicting collateral damage, said Lt. Col. Frank Corley III, 548th Combat Training Squadron commander. Corley told Air Force journalist MSgt. Jack Braden that typical military training facilities lacked the actual urban density needed for realistic training and Louisiana has “a very friendly populace” that was “more than willing to cooperate.”
The B-52 bombers that flew off the coast of Venezuela on Oct. 15 were accompanied by Marine Corps F-35s as part of a so-called “Bomber Attack Demonstration,” according to new images and information from the Pentagon.
