Anatolian Phoenix 2019
Ahead of this year’s Anatolian Eagle, Konya air base in southern Turkey played host to another exercise, dedicated to combat search and rescue. Jurgen van Toor and Patrick Dirksen were there.
fter a few huge explosions, the dust settles, and – briefly – all is quiet again. Then, the slowly increasing volume of rotor blades is suddenly interrupted by the noise of machine gun fire as bullets rip through a line of cars. Welcome to Anatolian Phoenix 2019/1! Konya air base is home to the well-known international exercise Anatolian Eagle (see Eagles return to Konya, p36-39), dominated by fast jets and a few slow-movers. Less well known is another Konya exercise: Anatolian Phoenix. This involves multiple combat search and rescue (CSAR) assets and missions of increasing difficulty.
