Hundreds of U.S. military members are training for the next two weeks in Gulfport and across Mississippi during a combat exercise that will send low-flying helicopters and noise across the area.
The event is called the Sentry South-Southern Strike exercise. It began Monday and ends Feb. 7.
The Air National Guard is hosting 500 members from the U.S. military’s active, guard and reserve units, a spokesperson for the Sentry South-Southern Strike Public Affairs office said in a news release.
The Air National Guard is holding the training at the Combat Readiness Training Center off Hewes Avenue in Gulfport. Training will also occur at the Camp Shelby Joint Forces Training Center near Hattiesburg.
The Sentry South-Southern Strike Public Affairs office described the event as an “elite combat training exercise.”
The annual exercise trains members from across the country in conventional and special operations. It includes training for irregular warfare, close air support, non-combatant evacuation and special operations events on rivers and other bodies of water, according to the news release.
Videos and photos from past training exercises show U.S. Air Force planes landing at Camp Shelby, service members practicing loading dummies into vans on stretchers, treating injuries aboard airplanes, transferring patients from helicopters and responding to mass casualty scenarios.
Capt. Eric Korpi, the director of operations of the 297th Air Traffic Control Squadron, said last year that Gulfport and Camp Shelby offer service members a good place to train.
“Gulfport CRTC and Camp Shelby provided a one stop shop for the type of services, logistical support, expertise, and numerous training locations we need to simulate a real-world deployment setting that we might encounter during conflict with a near-peer or peer competitor,” Korpi said in a news release after the training last year.
Areas around the Combat Readiness Training Center could see more aircraft and low flying helicopters and also hear more noise for the next two weeks, the news release said.
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