Nine Air Force A-10 attack jets and more than 270 Reserve and active-duty airmen from Missouri recently flew 152 sorties in Hawaii training with the Army, Navy and Marines for the far-reaching fight that someday might be waged across the Pacific.

The possibility of a conflict with China requires very different service branches to increasingly mesh together in austere operating conditions that would be manned and operational in a hurry.

“We trained to the inherent challenges of deploying a large footprint to a bare base operation,” Lt. Col. Stephen Chappel, with the 442nd Fighter Wing in Missouri, a Reserve unit, said in an Air Force-produced story. “It also provided us great exposure to the unique environments of the Pacific region.”

Exercise Tropic Koa ACE was held Feb. 11 to March 2 at Marine Corps Base Hawaii on Oahu, Kauai and Hawaii island.

The A-10s, legendary for their nose-mounted Gatling gun’s ability to shred armor on the ground, trained in the areas of close air support, combat search and rescue and forward arming and refueling with tilt-rotor Marine Corps MV-22 Ospreys and AH-1Z Viper helicopters based in Hawaii.

An Air Force HC-130J recovery aircraft out of Georgia served in an airborne mission command role, and ground-based Navy, Marine and Air Force attack controllers and Army airstrike observers directed maneuvers and transmitted targets for the A-10s, the Air Force said.

Two B-52H Stratofortress bombers were added for good measure, flying from Andersen Air Force Base on Guam to test close air support weapons capabilities on Feb. 11 and 13.

“The B-52 brings unique capabilities to the (close air support) fight,” Maj. Christopher Curtis, 23rd Expeditionary Bomb Squadron liaison officer, said in a news release. “Flying a long-duration sortie across the Pacific to deliver weapons in a CAS scenario highlights just one of those capabilities.”

Carl Schuster, a retired Navy captain and adjunct professor at Hawaii Pacific University, said Hawaii can expect many more of the service mash-ups practicing austere base operations in exercises to come.

“We’re all concerned about what’s going on in the South China Sea,” Schuster said. “The problem in that area is you don’t have large landmass and highly developed bases from which to operate.”

As a result, a conflict there likely would involve a lot of small-unit action and air mobility with a lot of “shock and move,” Schuster said. China is developing sophisticated missiles that can hit fixed bases, so the ability to move rapidly is key.

By integrating disparate elements, “we’re trying to find multiple applications for existing capabilities,” he said. The A-10, for example, is known for providing support to troops on the ground, but in the South China Sea, it would also be a very good maritime strike asset, Schu­ster said.

Ground crews practiced with training versions of AGM-65k Maverick air-to-ground missiles. The A-10s also shot 30-mm target practice ammunition at Pohakuloa Training Area on the Big Island and dropped BDU-33 inert bombs meant to replicate bigger actual weapons, the Air Force said.

The Marine Corps Ospreys practiced rescuing a downed pilot with A-10s providing cover, and a fuel transfer was conducted from an Osprey on the ground to an A-10 at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.