Exercise Cooperative Cope Thunder in Alaska officially ends Saturday, but airmen from Misawa AB, Japan, plan to stay an extra week “to implement lessons learned during the exercise and to fine tune our flight tactics,” said Lt. Col. Stephen Williams, Misawa’s 13th Fighter Squadron commander, reports Stars and Stripes. About 200 fighter pilots, maintainers, and support personnel from Misawa are participating in CCT, the largest Pacific multilateral combat exercise.
An important U.S. Air Force E-3 Sentry AWACS command and control plane was among the aircraft damaged in a March 27 Iranian missile and drone attack on Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, people familiar with the matter told Air & Space Forces Magazine.