US Strategic Command’s annual Global Thunder exercise that ended Monday included a record number of foreign participants. More than 20 representatives from the United Kingdom and Canada took part in Global Thunder 17 at Offutt AFB, Neb., according to a STRATCOM release. Their participation enhances STRATCOM’s “ability to work with our allies to anticipate change and confront uncertainty with agility and innovation,” said former STRATCOM chief Adm. Cecil D. Haney, according to the release. Gen. John Hyten took command of STRATCOM on Thursday. The weeklong exercise also tested STRATCOM’s capabilities across a range of missions—from space and cyber to global strike, according to a separate STRATCOM release. “Testing our strategic forces through a range of challenging scenarios validates their safety, security, effectiveness and readiness,” Haney said, according to the release. “While the exercise is based on a notional, classified scenario, it realistically allows my forces to exercise and train as they would fight.”
In the small world of Air Force weather specialists, combat weather specialists are a niche unto themselves, deploying with Army ground units to provide forecasts and, if need be, fight alongside those Soldiers. For Staff Sgt. Francisco Estrada, the hardest part of the job isn’t the possibility of ground combat,…
