Wolf Pack routs Beverly Sentinel in 26-4 blowout

KUNSAN AIR BASE, South Korea — The 8th Fighter Wing capped a three-day readiness drill on Tuesday that put Airmen through high-tempo, combat-relevant scenarios and expanded joint defenses with Marine Corps partners across the installation.

The exercise, Beverly Sentinel 26-4, ran July 21–23 and tested the “Wolf Pack” on the Ability to Survive and Operate playbook, the Air Force’s baseline for continuing missions during and after attacks. Units rehearsed medical, security and recovery tasks while keeping up the pace required to fight through a contested environment.

“Ensuring operational continuity in a contested environment is not optional,” said U.S. Air Force Col. John “Wolf” DeLion, 8th Fighter Wing commander. “By implementing these realistic training scenarios, we enhance the resilience and readiness required of our members to project combat airpower and execute the Wolf Pack mission under any conditions.”

Airmen refreshed and refined Tactical Combat Casualty Care, opposition force response, post-attack reconnaissance and emergency response procedures. Security Forces personnel ran base-wide patrols from Humvees, responding to simulated ground attacks and small uncrewed aircraft incursions while coordinating with the base defense operations center.

“Continuous, high-tempo training builds strong muscle memory that you can fall back on when stress and pressure begin to set in,” said U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Dylan Hayes, an 8th Security Forces Squadron base defense operations center operator. “This exercise prepares individual Airmen at Kunsan for real-world combat by forcing them to survive, operate and defend the installation under simulated, high-intensity enemy attacks.”

The wing also folded in sister-service partners to practice a layered defense and speed decisions inside the Emergency Operations Center. U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Jesus Duran, a Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear defense specialist from Marine Wing Support Squadron 171 in Iwakuni, Japan, served as the Marine CBRN cell counterpart, helping characterize hazards, propose courses of action to leaders and push information to ground teams.

“My unit and the 8th Civil Engineer Squadron emergency management flight work on airfields and both can be attacked by the enemy simultaneously,” said Duran. “Practicing how to respond to said attacks together definitely teaches us how each other operates and responds to these emergencies.”

“How the Airmen have dedicated CBRN teams and equipment bags at the ready – it taught me how to be more efficient, and I want to bring this system back to my Marines,” said Duran. “Bringing more branches together to train can only strengthen our capability as a military whole.”

Commanders said the repetition and stress are designed to surface gaps before a real crisis and to reinforce the wing’s “Fight Tonight” posture on the Korean Peninsula. “We execute these exercises routinely to stress-test our Airmen and systems, identifying the friction points, and adapting our tactics with the lessons we learned,” said DeLion. “We stress-test our processes in peacetime, to be ready when called upon.”