Air Guard exercises will soar over Oahu

Those who enjoyed the sight of Air Force fighters arcing over southern Oahu in January during the "Sentry Aloha" air combat exercise are about to get a second helping.

The Hawaii Air National Guard said it will host its second large-scale Sentry Aloha exercise beginning Thursday and running for the next two weeks.

"Area residents may see an increase in fighter aircraft activity as they take off and land" at Hono­lulu Airport, the Air Guard said.

For this iteration, F-15 Eagles from Oregon and Florida will be participating, the Guard said. The Arizona Air National Guard will send F-16 Falcons, A-10 Warthogs, C-130 Hercules transports, and a KC-135 Stratotanker. KC-135 refueling tankers will also be coming from Iowa and Maine.

U.S. Navy aviators will be flying variants of the F/A-18 Hornet from California out of the Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Base. A total of 45 aircraft and over 1,000 service personnel from seven states will be participating, the Guard said.

The venerable A-10 Warthog, a much-loved attack airplane for U.S. troops on the ground, will have simulated ground-support roles along with C-130s with fighters defending the planes from attack by enemy aircraft.

"It’s a matter of having dissimilar aircraft (for fighter training) and it’s also a matter of having very complex scenarios that can provide realistic training that these pilots would face if they were actually in a situation where they were deployed," Hawaii National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Chuck Anthony said of the exercise.

Sentry Aloha exercises have been conducted by the Hawaii Air Guard several times per year for decades, according to the service.

The air training has been growing in size and complexity following the Air Guard’s conversion in 2010 to the F-22 Raptor, the U.S. Air Force’s premier fighter.

"Sentry Aloha is now the premier and primary training exercise to prepare multiple elements of the Air National Guard in the mission of our nation’s defense and augmentation of active-duty forces should these (Air National Guard) units be called upon for conflict or war," the Hawaii National Guard said.

Three types of Air Force fighter aircraft — F-22s, F-15s and camouflage-painted F-16s — participated in the January training for about two weeks.

On one of the daily training events, about two dozen of the jets that came from Hawaii and around the country electronically took aim at one another in the type of peer-to-peer air war the United States might be forced to fight in the future.

Hundreds of miles north of the Hawaiian Islands, sometimes higher than commercial airliners fly, about a dozen "good guys" in F-22s and F-15s simulated a deep strike mission against 14 "bad guys" in F-16s as well as F-22s.

The type of air dominance the Air Force maintains has kept American ground troops from being killed by enemy aircraft since 1953, Col. Duke "Juice" Pirak, an F-22 pilot and acting vice commander of the Hawaii Air Guard’s 154th Wing, said at the time.

A key element of Sentry Aloha is the ability to use vast stretches of the Pacific for air-to-air training.

Hawaii’s 154th Wing is the largest Air National Guard wing in the nation and operates the F-22, KC-135, and C-17 cargo jet in conjunction with active-duty units maintained under Pacific Air Forces’ 15th Wing. The Hawaii Air Guard has about 2,500 airmen.