JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii -- Airmen from the 36th Contingency Response Group, Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and the 18th Wing, Kadena Air Base, Japan, are exercising the ability to conduct rapid deployment operations during Exercise Tropic ACE Aug. 28 - Sept. 15, 2017.

Tropic ACE was designed to exercise components of Pacific Air Forces’ Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept of operations (CONOPS), a warfighting concept the command is operationalizing to ensure airpower resiliency. Resiliency is required to ensure survivability and operational capability in a contested environment.

The objective of Tropic ACE is to exercise operations that facilitate the employment of agile combat concepts by rapidly deploying to a simulated austere location and self-sustain operations for an extended period of time. Additionally, Tropic ACE will exercise the ability to deploy rapid ground refueling capabilities.

These capabilities, demonstrated through ACE CONOPS, provides Pacific Air Forces global reach and agility in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region by ensuring forces are able to rapidly maneuver throughout the theater to respond to any contingency or crisis.