I don’t even know what this one stands for. But it was a combined live fire exercise led by Afghan Tactical Air Controllers (ATACs). ATACs are trained by coalition JTACs to be the eyes on the ground and call in air strikes. In this exercise, it was the first time they were tasked with also coordinating ground assault from a couple Humvees with mounted machine guns for suppressive fire between the air strikes they call in from their Super Tucanos and machine gun fire from the gunners in Mi-17 helicopters.<\/p>\n
It was an ambitious exercise but a great first step in advancing the coordination of assault tactics for the air controllers. I thought they did a great job.<\/p>\n
We found out about the exercise too late to coordinate bringing external media, so my multimedia guy Bjorn and I went to cover the exercise with video and still photos. I feel like I got some of the best photos I’ve shot since I’ve been here all in this one day.<\/p>\n
unfortunately, the photos didn’t make it out of theater to share on this blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t even know what this one stands for. But it was a combined live fire exercise led by Afghan Tactical Air Controllers (ATACs). ATACs are trained by coalition JTACs to be the eyes on the ground and call in air strikes. In this exercise, it was the first time they were tasked with also… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9IVlY-1W","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":49,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/12\/idf\/","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":0},"title":"IDF","date":"September 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night was my first solo CJOC watch. I went to bed early and then set my alarm for 2230 so I could get up and go to the gym to wake myself up before beginning the watch around midnight. The shift was going really well; I was ahead of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":81,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/17\/mophie\/","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":1},"title":"Mophie","date":"October 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Mophie was my first. The first embed I coordinated\u00a0from the initial request through the final escort out the gate. Mophie, a nickname derived from her AOL email address, was kind of a hot mess from the beginning. Often uttered throughout the process were the words, \"fuckin mophie\". When a reporter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":65,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/03\/peh\/","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":2},"title":"PEH","date":"October 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Pohantoon-e-Hawayee (PEH) is the officer candidate school for the Afghan Air Force. It is a one-year program and upon graduation the candidates are commissioned as officers and then go on to specialty schools such as pilot training or maintenance engineering school. The school is on the Afghan Air Force base,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/image-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/07\/pbs\/","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":3},"title":"PBS","date":"September 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There has been a lot of terrorist activity in Kabul since I arrived. My first night at RS, the team was dealing with media inquiries regarding the first American casualty from hostile fire since the beginning of the year. This didn't occur in Kabul, but it was a significant event.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/image-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":33,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/08\/31\/salty\/","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":4},"title":"Salty","date":"August 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I've now been at Resolute Support headquarters for a week, feeling like I belong. The folks I am working with now are great which makes it weird to think that by November, most of them will be redeployed and back home with their families. The base is incredibly small; the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":87,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/28\/shelter-in-place\/","url_meta":{"origin":120,"position":5},"title":"Shelter In Place","date":"October 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"It's 2200 (10 pm) and I just now got back to my room. This isn't an exceptionally late night, I've worked until 10 pm several times since I've been here. The difference being that on those nights, I was working. Tonight, I had very little going on; I browsed facebook,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}