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Exercise Maple Flag 47, including Exercise Wing Warrior and Exercise Maple Resolve, took place from May 16 to June 2, 2014, at 4 Wing Cold Lake, Alta.
Typically, Maple Flag is a large-force employment exercise involving fighter jets and other air assets from around the world. The 2014 version focused instead on interoperability among Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) fleets and jointness in operations with the Canadian Army.
“Wing Warrior is an RCAF combined exercise that allows us to train in interoperability amongst fleets in the Air Force,” said Lieutenant Joe Mullins, 4 Wing’s operations officer. “Operations in Libya proved the importance of integrated training to include assets such as helicopters, tankers, fighters and surveillance platforms. There is a need to coordinate and exercise these capabilities in an annual exercise.
“Cold Lake has a world-class range complete with electronic threat emitters,” he said. “It’s natural to do this in Cold Lake using the Air Force Tactical Training Centre.”
The RCAF’s involvement in Exercise Maple Resolve, meanwhile, focused on support for Army operations. “The main part is army-centric,” Lieutenant-Colonel Mullins said. The exercise involved CH-146 Griffon tactical helicopters, CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft and CC-130J Hercules transport aircraft and “fighters [were] involved in a close air support role,” he said.
Maple Resolve, the Canadian Army’s largest annual exercise, served as a high-readiness training and confirmation exercise for Canadian Army units. The RCAF capitalized on the training opportunity to test and validate Air Task Force (ATF) 1401 including the Air Expeditionary Wing (AEW) – primary components to a deployable RCAF task force.
Maple Resolve mainly took place at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta, but the Air Expeditionary Wing deployed to Camp Medley – a tent city that sprang up next to Cold Lake’s Medley terminal.
“For the purposes of the exercise,” said Major Forrest Rock, who commanded the Air Force Tactical Training Centre. “The Cold Lake airbase [was] considered a foreign country. One of the AEW’s tasks during this exercise [was] to operate out of the camp on an almost self-sustaining basis.”
Although the focus and the scale of this year’s Maple Flag changed from the typical large force employment exercise, Major Rock said the exercise remained “critical to the operational readiness of the RCAF.”
“It enables joint operations and training within the Canadian Armed Forces and fosters cooperation with our allies,” he said.
