Report and photos by Robbie van Disseldorp (this article first appeared in the April 2020 issue of Combat Aircraft Journal.)
When the Hawaii Air National Guard’s (ANG’s) 154th Wing received its first F-15 Eagles in 1987, the reality of its remote operations was a major consideration. While the location is strategically important, it limits the ability of the unit’s aviators to keep their skills sharp. In-house training is notoriously limited when it comes to fighter aircraft.
With the need to generate dissimilar air combat training (DACT) in mind, the ANG came up with Exercise ‘Sentry Aloha’. For three decades — and several times a year — this has brought together a collection of US military assets as well as other visiting air forces on the beautiful island of Oahu. Sentry Aloha 20-1 took place between January 8-22 2020 with a typically appealing spread of fighters. They included a dozen F-16Cs from the 18th Aggressor Squadron (AGRS) out of Eielson AFB, Alaska, eight F-15Cs of the 194th FS, California ANG from Fresno, and 12 resident F-22As from the 19th and 199th Fighter Squadrons at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Alongside the traditional tanker support, a pair of E-3 AWACS from Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, and two C-17A Globemaster IIIs from the local 204th Airlift Squadron were on hand, the latter flying an air-drop profile that required fighter escort.
Twice-daily mass launches required careful coordination as the base shares real estate with Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport. Exercise director Lt Col Matthew ‘Bad’ Ohman told us, ‘The objective of ‘Sentry Aloha’ is to provide tailored, cost-effective and realistic combat training to provide the warfighter with the necessary skills in order to come back home safely.’ This year’s first edition emphasized large-force employment against an advanced, near-peer threat. There was plenty of fourth-fifth generation fighter integration, mixing the Eagles with the Raptors. The ‘Red Air’ bad guys were mainly composed of 18th AGRS ‘Vipers’, but also incorporated the local Raptors. In fact, approximately 225 aggressor missions were flown by the F-22s during ‘Sentry Aloha’,
Organizers of this particular event pride themselves on unit-specific custom scenarios. Ohman said, ‘In ‘Sentry Aloha’ we’re able to allow the weapons officers from the various units to work closely together to achieve whatever desired learning objective the unit wants to achieve. [This] is different in that we allow the participants to determine the training they want to achieve.’ Another advantage here is the weather. ‘The number of sorties lost every year due to weather here in Hawaii is negligible — actually, since the exercise kicked off last week, we’ve had some of the worst weather we’ve had during a ‘Sentry Aloha’ exercise and
Increased tension in the Pacific region will only place a bigger spotlight on the exercise. If the presence of the Raptors in Hawaii isn’t enough of a deterrent, showcasing the Hawaii ANG’s capability to work in close coordination with other units such as the California ANG is an important messaging tool. This US military outpost is growing in importance, with ‘Sentry Aloha’ reflecting that level of significance.
