Photo By Master Sgt. Kevin Doheny | Soldiers and civilians from U.S Army South, along with military augmentees and members...... read more read more
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JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas--Looking at the history of events occurring within in the U.S. Southern Command’s area of responsibility, a contingency operation can arise almost as quickly as a Caribbean storm on a hot summer evening.
These types of operations can be very demanding on the soldiers of U.S. Army South, SOUTHCOM’s Army Service Component Command. They are required to react quickly if a country in Central and South America or the Caribbean request U.S. Government assistance responding to a natural disaster, humanitarian or other contingency operations.
With little time to react, everything must be prepared ahead of time; people identified and trained, equipment fully mission capable, personal affairs in order, and much more.
“One of the core efforts in Army South for the commanding general is to have a force that is prepared for any contingency that may arise in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” said Command Sgt. Maj. Dennis C. Zavodsky, U.S. Army South command sergeant major. “This effort ensures all Soldiers are ready to deploy in a moment’s notice.”
This type of scenario was recently tested at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Feb. 4 to 17 during SOUTHCOM’s biennially-conducted exercise, Integrated Advance. More than 500 personnel from the Department of Defense, Department of State and Department of Homeland Security deployed to Guantanamo Bay to train on a mass migration scenario in the Caribbean.
The Army South commander, Maj. Gen. Frederick S. Rudesheim, was tasked with establishing a joint task force headquarters to support a mass migration operation.
At the center of all the activity during the exercise were the non-commissioned officers of Army South.
They played a crucial role with every portion of the exercise. Army South NCOs led the way with transporting personnel, setting up the joint operations center, establishing communications, setting up of sleeping quarters, and life support, just to name a few essential tasks. All of these actions were part of the overall verification of the command’s contingency plan in a mass migration scenario.
“We have to know that we can depart home station and set up the deployable joint command and control system and establish command and control of any operation,” said Sgt. Maj. Robert Vanaken, contingency command post non-commissioned officer in charge. “This [exercise] illustrates what the command’s capabilities are and also identifies areas where we may need to improve as an organization and as NCOs.”
Perhaps just as important as verifying the command’s mass migration contingency plan was the ability for Army South personnel to establish a joint task force and work with other military services and interagency partners as a team.
For some joint task force NCOs, this was the first opportunity to work with members from other services, and they found the experience invaluable.
“This was my first joint exercise, and my appreciation and sense of camaraderie with the other branches grew exponentially,” said Sgt. Shawn Lawson, an information systems technology specialist with Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 56th Signal Battalion at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. “It was a chance to see how each of the individual services work and how we come together. For the most part, although we wear different uniforms, we’re all the same and work toward the same objective.”
“It was imperative that we integrated our sister services and inter-agency partners into the battle rhythm as soon as possible,” said Vanaken, who was the senior enlisted adviser on the joint operations center floor. “It is crucial for our NCOs to learn what our partners bring to the mission and then quickly incorporate them into the operation.”
Although SOUTHCOM conducts this exercise biennially, the training event was historic for Army South. It was larger in size than previous IA events; the joint task force was more than 500 personnel strong with military and civilian personnel being flown in from various U.S. locations.
For the exercise, Army South was directed by SOUTHCOM to perform certain key tasks. These tasks included, but not exclusively, constructing and managing the migrant camps. All of this was being done, while receiving migrants who were picked up at sea by DHS and then processing them through a joint migrant operations center. This JMOC acted as the location where migrants received their medical screening before being placed in one of the camps.
In order to accomplish this, Army South had to deploy a small element of personnel to establish a Joint Forces Land Component Command (JFLCC) during the initial stages of the exercise. The Land Component Element (LCE) of the JFLCC provided Army South with the ability to manage migrant or humanitarian camp-area operations and then transfer authority to DHS.
According to the senior enlisted adviser for the LCE, Sgt. Maj. Frederick Moore, by [the LCE] actually going through the whole mobilization, deployment, redeployment process, it brought into perspective and true meaning of what would be expected if a real-world humanitarian crisis were to occur. He was also impressed by the NCOs under his supervision and their level of expertise and professionalism during the exercise.
“The directorates provided some of the best NCOs I’ve worked with in a very long time,” said Moore. “Those NCOs filled billets that mid-grade and field grade officers would typically be assigned to. These experienced NCOs, both junior and senior level, were very knowledgeable about their functional areas and I could not have asked for a better team for the exercise.”
Now that that exercise is complete and everyone is back to normal daily operations, Army South NCOs can take their lessons observed from IA13 incorporate them into processes, procedures and plans for contingency operations. One of the goals for Army South personnel during post-exercise activities is now to take their lessons observed and turn them into lessons learned. These lessons learned will be used to aid personnel executing this contingency plan scenario more effectively and efficiently.
“As with all military operations, our NCOs played the critical role of executing the plan,” said Zavodsky. “Every aspect of the operation was NCO-led and executed from pre-deployment training, RSOI [reception, staging, onward, integration], execution and redeployment. I know as an organization we have grown as we all had the opportunity to work together and now we have a greater understanding of what the different directorates in the command bring to the fight.”
| Date Taken: | 03.14.2013 |
| Date Posted: | 03.14.2013 11:58 |
| Story ID: | 103474 |
| Location: | GUANTANAMO BAY, CU |
| Web Views: | 73 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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