An F-35A Lightning II, assigned to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, takes off. (U.S. Air Force photo by Anthony Pham)

419th Fighter Wing News

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419th FW takes Cope Thunder by storm

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Christina Wright
  • 419th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah --  Members of the 419th Fighter Wing recently joined more than 800 United States and allied forces at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, to join in Cooperative Cope Thunder 06-3.

Cooperative Cope Thunder is the Air Force's largest multilateral air combat exercise in the Pacific. Pilots from the 466th Fighter Squadron as well as maintenance personnel from the 419th Fighter Wing participated in the two-week exercise for the second time in five years.

"We took 13 jets with us and flew every one of them for at least one sortie," accounted Maj. Chris Walters, the operations officer for the 419th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.

Each sortie was a joint and international combat training exercise involving allied, coalition, and observer nations.

Sweden, Japan and Canada comprised the multinational forces. Filling the role of lead wing was the 35th Fighter Wing from Misawa Air Base, Japan, with Lt. Col. Stuart Lum commanding the 35th FW Aircraft Maintenance Group.

"I was truly impressed," said Colonel Lum, of the condition of the 419th FW aircraft. "They (the 419th maintenance squadron) performed to perfection and maintained the condition of their jets throughout."

Because of the excellent maintenance and high performance, 419th maintenance crews only had a couple of long nights. 466th FS pilots were able to complete an unprecedented 186 sorties resulting in 406.7 training flying hours during the exercise, with the average sortie time being 2.2 hours.

"The aircraft, for the most part, performed as expected," said Master Sgt. James Pineault, the APG flight chief. "We only experienced a couple problems."

The cooperation between the various units helped a lot when problems arose. Lending tools and sharing of parts was common and lent a hand to the 419th being the only unit that met every assigned mission throughout the exercise.

"We never missed a sortie and always came up with the jets they required," said Tech. Sgt. Bart Bates, a 419th crew chief. "It was a good effort between each of the shops. All shops helped where they could."

"All in all, it was a very good deployment," said Sergeant Pineault. "The majority of the maintenance crew were junior enlisted and on their first deployment. Their performance was outstanding."


Training with other national forces under these circumstances, away from home station, is the best training for us to participate in, Sergeant Pineault added.

"Cope Thunder demonstrates, on a smaller scale, how we would deploy for an AEF or war plan tasking," said Maj. Max Stitzer, maintenance group deputy commander. "We produced missions at a higher rate than we normally would, even at home station, where we have significantly more infrastructure and support from the entire Maintenance Group complex and workforce."

Cooperative Cope Thunder is a multi-service, multi-platform coordinated combat operations exercise and corresponds to the designed operational capability of participating units.