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 Pentagon’s Joint Interagency Task Force 401 took a step toward making an Amazon-like online marketplace for counter-drone tech a reality this week with its first acquisition under the Replicator 2 effort.
