Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

Alaskan Command sets up joint training range

Location counts — whether you’re buying a home or setting up a joint training range.

Alaskan Command, a subunified command under U.S. Pacific Command, is stitching together more than 100,000 square miles in the 49th state where air, land and sea forces can practice full-scale, all-domain war.

The Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex, or JPARC, will bring together the services’ existing training ranges: the Air Force’s 66,000-square-mile Pacific Alaska Range Complex, home to the Red Flag Alaska exercise; the Army’s new $80 million Battle Area Complex and Combined Arms Combat Training Facility near Fort Greely, Fort Wainwright and Fairbanks, Alaska; and 58,000 square miles of ocean and air space in the Gulf of Alaska.

Next spring, Alaskan Command expects to release a JPARC master plan for the next 25 years and begin a formal environmental impact study that will assess JPARC’s effects on the environment, said Steven Hatter, Alaskan Command’s joint training and ranges administrator.

“We’re plowing new ground … as joint stewards of all the capacity here,” Hatter said. “The services have done the work here ... and they have built out their capacities. What we’re trying to do is just multiply that effort.”

The wide open spaces along with Alaska’s sparse population — the 2008 census estimate was about 700,000 — present an opportunity for a joint training area unlike anywhere else in the world, Hatter said.

“We think we can create a very realistic battle space where we can do … very realistic rehearsals for a joint task force,” he said. “You [can] do air, land and maritime joint interoperability training events because you’ve got the contiguous training space [and] you’ve got all domains to play in. We’ve got all that here in Alaska.”

Getting the services to play nice on such an ambitious project is no small feat. Each has a history of at times putting its own interests ahead of joint efforts.

To foster cooperation, Alaskan Command last year created a senior-level working group of leaders who can communicate their training requirements and voice their concerns.

The group, which meets four times a year, consists of commanders and senior officials from Alaskan Command, Pacific Command, U.S. Army Alaska, 11th Air Force and the various Air Force and Army bases in the state. The Navy doesn’t have any officers on the panel because it has no bases in Alaska, but Hatter said the service may be represented in the future.

“It made sense for the disparate stakeholders to agree to start thinking of Army ranges, Air Force ranges [and] maritime training areas … in terms of a joint enterprise,” he said.

Alaskan Command found a small amount of money for JPARC, which Hatter said heartens the services because they usually have to pay for training range development. Joint Forces Command has certified JPARC as Pacific Command’s joint training program of excellence, which makes available limited funding from JFCom. Hatter didn’t give the dollar figure.

“What it buys for you is entry into a community of stakeholders so you can get some JFCom dollars,” Hatter said. “That is encouraging to the services.”

Besides the financial help, the services are attracted to the increased joint training opportunities JPARC will present, he said. Right now, Army and Air Force units in Alaska and the Pacific have limited time to train together before they go to war.

The Northern Edge exercise occurs only every other year so many deploying units don’t train with their air or ground partners until they go to the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, Calif., immediately before a deployment.

Northern Edge — involving some 9,000 personnel from all the services, more than 200 aircraft, ground units and an aircraft carrier — is the model for the kind of joint training JPARC will foster, Hatter said.

Despite the benefits of JPARC, Hatter said he expects there will be occasional inter-service conflicts to resolve. The services pay to develop their own ranges, and they may be reluctant to give up some control.

“It is realistic … that services are interested in training to their core competencies,” he said. “There probably will be some conflict. The good news is … we already have a conflict management forum in place.”