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Swamp Fox Intel Hosts Air Combat Command Course

  • Published
  • By Chief Master Sgt. Matthew Morehouse
  • 169th Operations Support Squadron

The 169th Operations Support Squadron (OSS) Intelligence Flight hosted the Air Combat Command (ACC) Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) mobile training course from November 9-20. The course consisted of students from the 51st Intelligence Squadron and the 20th OSS Intelligence Flight from Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. plus four SCANG Airmen.

“The intent of the IADS course is to provide students with the research and analytical experience in examining real IADS so they can take that knowledge back to their units and teach their Airmen the principles of how to examine and attack an IADS,” said Mr. Travis Sampson, one of the course instructors.

To meet that goal, students spent the first few days learning about the components that form an IADS. The remaining days, the students learned about and analyzed real IADS in small teams and then created their own air defense system and in turn had their IADS “attacked” by the students in the other teams during the capstone exercise.

“The capstone exercise was really useful because we deployed our air defenses based on what we needed to defend and how we thought blue forces were going to attack us. The adversary always gets a vote in how effective our operations are and the capstone provided a good example of that,” said 1st Lt. Wray White, 169th OSS Intel Flight Training officer in charge.

This was the third time that the ACC IADS course was conducted and was the largest class to date. One of the classes was cut short due to COVID-19.

“This is an important course because in the last thirty years the Air Force has conducted four counter-IADS air campaigns. It’s extremely difficult to conduct follow-on ops if you haven’t rolled back the IADS so we need to know how to do this,” said Maj. Jonathan Thompson, 169th SCANG Intelligence Officer. “We were happy to get the opportunity to host the course for ACC.”