The biennial Northern Edge exercise took place in the wilds of Alaska this summer. Hans Antonissen and Patrick Roegies joined around 10,000 military personnel and 200 aircraft from the US Air Force, navy and marines as the latest technologies were put to the test.
The name may have changed over the years, but there are good reasons why the location of the Northern Edge exercise has remained constant for almost half a century. “Alaska is not only the most strategic place in the world, [but it also] provides the exercise with 110,000 square miles of space between the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex [JPARC] and Gulf of Alaska, which enables the exercise [participants] to train according to a set of objectives and a level of intensity that cannot be replicated anywhere else.” So says Northern Edge 2019 exercise director Brig Gen Daniel ‘Rock’ Hieres.
