ASOS travels to Grandview for training

By Tech. Sgt. Becky Vanshur
124th Wing Public Affairs

The town of Grandview south of Mountain Home Air Force Base hosted Idaho Air National Guard members for a day of unique, realistic training March 16. The terrorist attack training exercise called "Angry Rattle" gave members of the 124th Air Support Operations Squadron valuable training to improve their ability to provide air-toground support and communication with several aircraft, including Army AH-64 Apache helicopters, A-10 Thunderbolt IIs and F-15E Strike Eagles.

Grandview town officials were kind enough to allow the 124th ASOS to perform these exercises throughout their streets, buildings, river and canals. The reason for this realworld training in the middle of a town was to allow for more dynamic events that would be difficult to experience in an environment like the desert. One scenario involved the opposing forces attacking the main bridge coming into the town. This bridge is the only way to get supplies from the north to south. This type of training gave the ASOS members experience in a real-world situation they might experience in a deployed location like Afghanistan.
We don’t often get a chance to train in an urban environment. Normally we do most of our scenarios out on a range that is very sterile and wide open. There are a lot of tanks that make nice targets for practicing the basics,” said Maj. Shawn
Scott from the 124th ASOS, who served as commander and coordinator of this exercise.