Guam Air Traffic Control Center Supports Multinational Air Exercises
Cope North is one of three major military exercises the FAA supports in the Pacific.
Story written by Daniel Glover, FAA Office of Communications
Air traffic controllers (ATC) and technicians at the Guam Combined Center Radar Approach Control (CERAP) provided support for military exercises in the airspace over Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in February.
The annual Cope North exercises featured more than 100 aircraft of 14 different types from the United States, Australia, Japan and South Korea. The latter country participated this year for the first time in the two decades of the exercises.
Guam CERAP Air Traffic Manager Tim Cornelison said planning for the next year’s Cope North begins almost immediately after the current year’s exercises end. The planning consists of initial, mid-year and final planning exercises.
The exercises occur within the nearly 260,000 square miles of airspace handled by the CERAP, so personnel from the facility attend those planning sessions, which typically rotate among Guam, Honolulu and Japan. The CERAP provides air traffic services for Andersen Air Force Base, as well as the international airports for Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Rota, Saipan and Tinian.
“During the exercise, the daily air traffic count increases 100 percent over normal, and the complexity is probably three times above the norm,” Cornelison said. “This requires a great deal of collaboration with [the National Air Traffic Controllers Association] NATCA because operational and support personnel staffing needs to be as close to 100 percent as we can get them, which means little to no leave during exercise.”
Technical Operations also supports Cope North. “We ensure our systems are prepared by scheduling and performing our maintenance and other projects to provide for maximum availability and minimum disruption to NAS operations in the weeks leading up to and during the exercise,” said Randy Reeves, manager of the Guam CERAP System Support Center.
This year’s Cope North ran from Feb. 12–28, with aircraft conducting 1,259 sorties (aircraft exercises), according to a post-event briefing. Nearly 2,000 military personnel participated in the exercise.
The FAA supports two other large-force military exercises in the Pacific region, the U.S.-only Valiant Shield and the multinational Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC. The Guam CERAP supports Valiant Shield, planning and preparing for it and Cope North simultaneously; Honolulu Control Facility supports RIMPAC.
Cornelison said Valiant Shield, which is scheduled for September, is expected to involve twice as much airspace, aircraft and participation as Cope North.
The Navy has scaled back this year’s RIMPAC, which was set to begin in June, to a two-week, at-sea-only event in August because of the ongoing national public health emergency.
