HOHENFELS, Germany --Think of these guys as the set of eyes and ears to the fighter pilots delivering their lethal payload. The joint terminal attack controllers, or JTACs, are the forward observers who control and call in attack aircraft.
In what they would call a return to form, members of a Royal Danish Army tactical air control party, alongside Royal Dutch Army JTACs and U.S. Army and Air Force members of the Bulls-Eye team conducted close air support and call-for-fire training against enemy armored vehicles as part of a month-long set of exercises known as Combined Resolve III here at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center Oct. 29.
These Soldiers and airmen train to provide their artillery and air force counterparts with accurate information of enemy positions, including armored vehicles, from the ground.
"I've worked with U.S. forces a lot in the past, since we've trained mostly for [International Security Assistance Force] or Iraq," said Sgt. 1st Class Jon L. Poulsen, a JTAC with the Danish TACP. "And now we go on to more of a conventional type of warfare where we are actually facing enemy armor."
As team Bulls-Eye jet fighters crossed the sky, Poulsen and his teammate, Sgt. 1st Class Anders "Ace" Madsen, another Danish JTAC, inched closer toward enemy lines in order to relay accurate coordinates to supporting assets in the air.
They attempted to get a fix on the location of an enemy armored vehicle that was launching rockets towards their Bulls-Eye counterparts in the air.
But enemy infantry spotted them.
Poulsen and Madsen then moved across the ridge to avoid incoming mortar fire simulated by the observers and trainers overseeing the exercise.
Once at the wood line, and with enemy coordinates in hand, Poulsen and Madsen called in for air support just as enemy armored vehicles approached.
"It takes a lot to get [armored personnel carriers], armor, everything here in a single lane for a single guy," Poulsen said, "Out here we get to utilize all those things at once."
Dutch JTACs conducted a similar exercise that day infiltrating enemy territory to get a fix on their targets. The Dutch JTACs also called in for airstrikes against opposing force armor and infantry units.
"Sooner or later we are going to have to react to each other in the real world," said 1st Lt. Bas Schenkels on working with U.S. and NATO forces. Schenkels is a commanding officer with a Royal Dutch Army JTAC team. "This training exercise shows that we can actually do that without too much planning."
NATO member and partner nations all share English as the common language for JTAC training and is a requirement for passing the initial military occupation course.
"All our tactics are the same. We just call them by different names," Schenkels said. "That builds confidence for the future."
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