Combat Camera active, Reserve units train together
After two weeks in the field participating in Exercise Scorpion Lens and one week of prep, active duty and Reserve Airmen from the 1st and 4th Camera Squadrons, respectively, decamped Army Training Center Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and McCrady Training Center, Eastover, S.C for the road back to Joint Base Charleston.
The exercise is the 1st CTCS’s annual ability to survive and operate training exercise mandated by Air Force Combat Camera job qualification standards. It’s the second time the 4th CTCS Reserve Citizen Airmen have participated in the exercise since co-locating with their active duty counterparts. Capt. Jinny Lang, 4th CTCS, and a two-time participant said: “This training is important on several levels. It’s vital on an individual skills level, and it’s strengthening the Air Force’s Combat Camera Total Force Initiative. We’re going to deploy together, so it’s vital that we train together.”
The training included
“It was the crawl-walk-run training approach. It started in the classroom and climaxed with a firefight," said Staff Sgt. Kyle Brasier, 4th CTCS. " As a photojournalist, I feel I have the camera down, but firing sim[ulation] rounds at OPFOR [the opposition force] and conducting a sensitive site exploitation underfire, it’s not something we do during a [Reserve] unit training assembly.”
The training also included how to operate in chemical and nighttime environments.
”I had never set up DVIDS [Defense Video Information Distribution System] terminal before," said Corban Lundborg, 4th CTCS. "This is how we transmit our imagery from an austere location back to the States. HMMWV [Humvee] roll-over training, a virtual reality firing range and much more was packed into the three weeks of training meant to prepare Air Force’s Combat Camera active duty and Reserve Airmen for the missions coming over the horizon
