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SDWG Trains at Air, Ground, Drone Skills

November 7, 2022

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South Dakota Wing held a day-long operational mission training exercise on Saturday, Nov 5.  The training, conducted at multiple locations around the state, featured airborne search and photography skills, ground search, air-to-ground coordination, aerial drone photography, and related mission management skills.

“As the civilian auxiliary of the Air Force, CAP members make the commitment to be ready to go when called to support local, state, tribal and federal agencies,” said Col. Michael Marek, CAP’s incident commander during the day of the exercise. “Over 50 CAP members participated today, accomplishing some excellent and challenging training tasks. Their commitment to service exemplifies the core values of CAP.”

This exercise was what the South Dakota Wing calls a Distributed SAREX (Search and Rescue Exercise) where there is centralized oversite by a CAP incident management team, but decentralized execution.  Several locations around the state served as staging areas that launched and communicated with ground teams and aircrews.  This arrangement gets more training done for the dollar because people across the state don’t need to deploy to a central location.  The Distributed SAREX allows squadrons to tailor their exercise scenarios to meet the training needs of their own individual members.

The training was funded by the Air Force via CAP’s National Operations Center.  Further training is likely over the next few days, as approved by South Dakota Wing’s incident commander and mission management staff.

 


 

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