An exercise along the Panama Canal in the last week had more than 250 airmen incorporating several USAF concepts, so military and civilian personnel from 20 countries could learn how to handle numerous operations simultaneously in a joint working environment. First Lt. Christina Mundy reports that the air element of the exercise included airmen from 12th Air Force, Air Forces Southern, and the 612th Air Operations Group. Col. John Marselus, commander of the Doolittle Air and Space Operations Center at Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz., said that exercise incorporated the real-world “reach-back” capabilities of five Air Component Coordinating Elements and an Air Operations Center Communications Enhancement Package. “By employing key concepts during PANAMAX, we are able to reach back to our CAOC—in Arizona—and run all air, space, and information operations from one central location,” he said. The exercise concludes today.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
