Approximately 500 service members from the Active, Guard and Reserve components of the U.S. military participated in exercise Sentry South-Southern Strike 2025 at the Gulfport Combat Readiness Training Center and Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center from Jan. 27 to Feb. 6.
Exercise Sentry South-Southern Strike is a joint military partnership that strengthens contingency response operations, agile combat employment, aeromedical evacuation, joint maritime training, specialized fueling operations and intra-theater airlift and airdrop.
"Through these joint training opportunities, we learn to speak one another's languages," said Col. Albert Germany, Sentry South-Southern Strike Exercise director. "We also build contacts that we can use in actual operations and in future exercises."
In addition to supporting future operations and participants, the exercise provided invaluable training opportunities for service members.
"Southern Strike is significant because we build our exercise around the training initiatives that our warfighters need to get prepared to go down range and fight the mission," said Col. Jeff Kirby, Gulfport CRTC commander.
During the exercise, the Tactical Air Control Party team and Soldiers conducted airborne and close air support missions for joint fires integration.
"For an exercise at this scale, it is quite important for us to integrate when it comes to close air support," said Capt. Henry Garcia, a 548th Combat Training Squadron TACP officer and Southern Strike subject matter expert. "It requires detailed integration with the ground forces to help communicate with air players during training exercises or missions that we're conducting to prepare us for any near-peer fights or large-scale combat operations."
The Gulfport CRTC and Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center offer a wide range of training environments.
"The CRTC provides rare training infrastructures you can't get too many places in the world," Kirby said. "We have a large air-to-air training environment over the Gulf where fighters go out and fight air war, then transition through tactical air spaces to our overland ranges where the aircraft can engage ground targets and support ground troops."
Southern Strike strengthens military members' skills and improves joint coordination.
"Each year is different," Kirby said. "We're putting electronic threat environments out there this year, so the warfighters have to suppress or defeat the electronic threats before they come in and actually drop ordnance over their range."
B-1 Lancer bombers executed precise simulated bomb drops over Camp Shelby during the exercise.
"We're conducting a live, close air support training event where we'll have B-1s dropping three GBU-54 inert bombs," Garcia said.
As the methods of warfare evolve, the exercise focused on balancing past and future tactics and techniques to ensure the warfighters are equipped for any challenge.
"We're dusting off Cold War era techniques, tactics and procedures and adjusting them for the modern environment," Germany said. "We're integrating new domains such as cyber systems as we work to validate new methods of employing new technologies combined with old technologies to fight large-scale combat."
Sentry South-Southern Strike shifted the focus from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to preparing for near-peer adversaries while also expanding training opportunities through new capabilities for future exercises.
"We're exploring new ways to innovate and exercise as we push toward the future," Germany said. "Our mission is to ensure that our warfighters receive the essential training they need in the most realistic environment possible, so they are fully prepared when called upon to go to war."
