RAF Typhoons participate in Exercise Yellow Sands
January 3, 2025
The Yellow Sands series of exercises are part of the 9th Air Force (Air Forces Central) Combined Integrated Air and Missile Defence programme, and are focused on the combined defence of the Arabian Peninsula. The exercise has come to be a crucial platform for AFCENT and its partners to improve their ability to effectively neutralize UAS threats, ensuring the safety and security of their airspace.
Exercise Yellow Sands brings together international partners to test multinational interoperability and to refine responses to enemy unmanned aircraft systems. In the latest iteration of the exercise, participants included US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon FGR.Mk 4s, as well as a USAF E-11A BACN (Battlefield Airborne Communications Node) communications relay aircraft. The E-11A played a vital role in the exercise, serving as a communications bridge, seamlessly connecting the diverse systems used by the various coalition partners. The E-11A can provide voice and data system gateways, allowing for a seamlessly transparent real-time intra-operative flow of communications.
Exercise Yellow Sands provides a vital step towards ensuring global security through close collaboration in the Middle East, exercising multinational integration across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains and enhancing theatre security co-operation, partner information sharing, and multinational command and control in a contested environment.
