U.S. Strategic Command on Friday announced the conclusion one day earlier of its Global Lightning 17 exercise.
The annual series of exercises involves Strategic Command, additional U.S. combatant commands and agencies, and personnel from the United Kingdom and other partner nations, according to a Strategic Command press release. This year’s event started on Feb. 7 “and enabled Department of Defense (DoD) forces to train with partners and allies, assess joint operational readiness and validate the command’s ability to identify and mitigate attacks across all USSTRATCOM mission areas,” the release says.
The release did not specify the scenario involved in the exercise, but said the program “is designed to ensure the resilience, redundancy and survivability of U.S. strategic deterrent forces, stressing the USSTRATCOM capabilities that are provided to geographic combatant commanders during a crisis or contingency.”
Global Lightning 17 was conducted concurrently with Austere Challenge 17, a U.S. European Command-led , computer-assisted exercise in which Strategic Command participated. The exercise was intended to help multiple combatant commands practice cooperating to deal with mock security scenarios involving Europe.
Strategic Command’s missions include long-range nuclear deterrence, missile defense, and global strike.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy last week conducted four successful test flights of unarmed Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles as part of a Follow-on Commander’s Evaluation Test of an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine. The evaluation test was meant to validate the reliability and accuracy of the missile system, information to be used by the commander of Strategic Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Navy said.
The Trident II missile is part of the sea-based leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, which is being upgraded as part of the nation’s ongoing nuclear deterrent modernization program. The Navy said that since the missile was introduced to the fleet in 1989, it has completed 165 successful test flights.
The Navy launches followed the Air Force’s Feb. 8 test-firing of an unarmed Minuteman III ICBM, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, a distance of about 4,200 miles.
