Air Force Wing Enhances Readiness, Resilience During Exercise Beverly Sentinel

Running from July 21-23 at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea, Exercise Beverly Sentinel 26-4 demonstrated the 8th Fighter Wing's commitment to readiness and force preparedness.

Through intense exercise scenarios, airmen sharpened their specialized skills and practiced critical decision-making under pressure, maintaining an operational tempo required to sustain combat operations in a contested environment.

During the exercise, airmen focused on ability to survive and operate training scenarios, an essential component toward exercising the wing's ability to defend the base and sustain mission-critical operations.

"Ensuring operational continuity in a contested environment is not optional," said Air Force Col. John DeLion, 8th Fighter Wing commander. "By implementing these realistic training scenarios, we enhance the resilience and readiness required of our members to project combat airpower and execute the [wing's] mission under any conditions."

Each unit bolstered mission-essential skills while refining lifesaving techniques and strategies, including tactical combat casualty care, opposition force response, post-attack reconnaissance and emergency response procedures.

Air Force Senior Airman Dylan Hayes, 8th Security Forces Squadron base defense operations center operator, was one of many airmen during the exercise who understood the value of this training for the team.

"Continuous, high-tempo training builds strong muscle memory that you can fall back on when stress and pressure begin to set in," he said. "This exercise prepares individual airmen at Kunsan for real-world combat by forcing them to survive, operate and defend the installation under simulated, high-intensity enemy attacks."

Hayes was one of four 8th SFS members assigned to patrol the installation inside a Humvee, providing surveillance and force response measures from simulated attacks at ground level with opposing forces and from above with unmanned aircraft systems.

Additionally, the exercise demonstrated joint force operations by showcasing services working side by side to defend the base, integrating their capabilities into a unified, layered defense against potential threats.

"My unit and the [8th Civil Engineer Squadron emergency management flight] work on airfields, and both can be attacked by the enemy simultaneously," said Marine Corps Sgt. Jesus Duran, a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense specialist assigned to the Marine Wing Support Squadron 171. "Practicing how to respond to said attacks together definitely teaches us how each other operates and responds to these emergencies."

Duran participated as the Marine Corps CBRN cell counterpart for the base's emergency operations center, reporting potential hazards in response to simulated threats, providing recommended courses of action to base leaders and relaying that information to ground CBRN teams to execute.

"How the airmen have dedicated CBRN teams and equipment bags at the ready - it taught me how to be more efficient, and I want to bring this system back to my Marines," he said. "Bringing more branches together to train can only strengthen our capability as a military whole."

Integrating with other services during exercises like this validates the training as not an individual task but a joint imperative required to sustain combat operations under pressure.

As the exercise concluded, the readiness built under pressure remained for the team, weaving its way through the everyday lives of the base's service members while bolstering the wing's posture.

"We execute these exercises routinely to stress-test our airmen and systems, identifying the friction points and adapting our tactics with the lessons we learned," DeLion said. "We stress-test our processes in peacetime, to be ready when called upon."