WESTFIELD – A number of F-15C/D aircraft and more than 100 members of the 104th Fighter Wing assigned to Barnes Air National Guard base began deploying Saturday for a three-week multinational exercise in Malaysia called COPE TAUFAN, where Massachusetts Air National Guard members will be conducting exercise operations alongside active duty F-22 Raptor aircraft and multinational Mig-29 and Su-27 aircraft.
“The 104th Fighter Wing’s involvement in this exercise speaks volumes to the relevance of this unit in the global theater,” said Col James J. Keefe, Wing Commander. “We were asked to participate in this exercise because of our proficiency with Advance Fighter Integration”.
During this exercise, American fighter aircraft will fly dissimilar aircraft training with Royal Malaysian Air Force MiG-29 and SU-27 aircraft. These exercises both build relationships with one of our strategic partners but also aids in developing tactics for F-15 and F-22 integration in the Pacific Theater of Operations, said Keefe.
The unit’s participation in this exercise comes months after it trained at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii in March where it participated in Exercise SENTRY ALOHA, where the wing trained with the F-22s that it will be flying with while in Malaysia.
This exercise also marks the furthest west the 104th has traveled for training exercises, demonstrating an ability to both cover contingencies to the east, as well as the west.
“With the change of our aircraft from the A-10 to the F-15, this is the first time we’ve been able to participate in this exercise,” said Keefe. “It’s a multi-national training exercise to work with the Malaysians, and it allows the 104th Fighter Wing to perform it’s mission in the Pacific area of responsibility with the pivoting toward the Pacific of our national defense strategy.”
“We’re also able to work with some other Air National Guard units from Hawaii, so we’re doing some fighter integration, as well as working with the Malaysians themselves.” he said.
“This will be purely military training and cooperating with our partner in Malaysia, which we’ve done since the 1980s,” he said. “We’re working on just getting our aircraft and our people to the Pacific Area of Responsibility. It’s a pretty long way out there, so just the logistics itself, that is a good part of the training.”
“The second part is to actually work with a foreign country. If we had to deploy somewhere in the Pacific, this could be one of the countries we could deploy to and work with if there was combat operations,” Keefe said. “We’ll probably get back around the end of the month. The exercise itself is a two-week training exercise, so it takes some time to get over, some time to get back.”
The 104th Wing Commander stated that over 100 people will be deploying from the 104th Fighter Wing, along with over 100 from each of the other National Guard units joining them on the exercise. Keefe added that the F-15’s of the 104th will fall under the command of the Pacific Air Force’s chain of command.
“We’ll fall underneath them for operational control, so we’ll actually be chopped away from the Massachusetts Air National Guard, and come under the command and control of the PacAF Commander,” said Keefe. “When we flew A-10’s, we never went to the Pacific, we flew to Europe and the Middle East because that’s where the aircraft were needed. But now with the national defense military strategy, more of our resources are training in the Pacific Area of Responsibility.”
Regarding the distance the F-15’s will be covering, Keefe stated that they’ve been to Hawaii several times, but Malaysia is still a considerable flight from the Aloha State.
“We just went to Hawaii in March, so that was about halfway there. We’ve still got another half the ocean to go,” he said. “A lot of people don’t realize how big the Pacific is. The Atlantic Ocean is pretty small, really – in six hours you can get to London from New York – but getting over to Malaysia, that’s a haul.”
