Northern Strike 2024 in Alpena & Grayling Introduce New Training Drills

Northern Strike brings thousands of military service members from all the various branches together to train in Grayling and Alpena. “Northern Strike is a joint multinational exercise that started in Michigan in 2012. So, we’ve been doing it continuously since and it has grown across the joint DOD force and across our partner force as well. We have over 6,300 people on ground between Alpena, Grayling, and various other training sites in between. The forces represent many states and other countries coming to participate and this innovative one-of-a-kind training. As far as the US, we’re represented by 32 states and territories this year. We’ve got several foreign participants as well. What brings them here is the amazing training space we have and the national all domain warfighting center between Grayling and Alpena and the airspace above. It’s a unique opportunity to integrate the joint force and then integrate partner forces as well, something that’s not able to be done in most training locations. And we’re able to train in all five domains of warfare,” Northern Strike Land Director Col. Todd Fitzpatrick said.

At the same time, there’s new and expanded training. “So, we’ve expanded our US footprint. We are exposing our joint war fighters to US operations that they may see in a current or future fight. We’ve developed a base defense operations lane to show what’s currently happening around the world with regard to one way drone proliferation and the threats that they provide. So, we’re teaching our rotational units how to respond to that,” said Col. Fitzpatrick. One interesting area of training is in drone warfare. “So not only do we have over 300 drones assigned to the to the training space, but we also train Michigan National Guard soldiers to operate those drones and serve as an opposing force to our rotational units and help in at least a day,” Fitzpatrick said.