Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Jason Hull | U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Kelvin Maldonado, a paratrooper assigned to the 2nd Brigade...... read more read more
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FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Known as the America’s Guard of Honor, the 82nd Airborne Division is the nucleus of the nation’s Global Response Force. Being tasked to maintain an ever-ready contingent of paratroopers has made the division a force capable of rapid deployment worldwide. Having a battalion task force notified, assembled and ready to take off within 18 hours is a unique task. Decades of answering the nation’s call for wartime, humanitarian and disaster response has resulted in a staggering metamorphosis from the three parachute infantry regiments and single glider infantry regiment that participated in Operation Overlord back in 1944.
This week is All American Week, when paratroopers, past and present, pay tribute to their storied history with the theme, “Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of D-Day and the Paratrooper.”
From the transport planes and the gliders that delivered troops, artillery and supplies into the European Theater of World War II, strategic deployability has since expanded into a still more impressive and vital capability. To support the GRF mission, the Army and the 82nd Abn. Div. continue to transform paratroopers, their tactics and their equipment to meet a variety of modern threats, conventional and unconventional, and with little-to-no notice. Joint-service operability is a necessity, as the paratroopers will need air support.
“The team of the Air Force and the 82nd provides the nation with strategic reach,” said Maj. Nate Palisca, the operations officer for the division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. “No other nation can put an entire BCT on the ground, anywhere in the world, as quickly as we can. That gives our commander in chief options. We’re ready to fight and win, tonight.”
One of the brigades is beginning an intensive training cycle that will incorporate a variety of potential scenarios in-line with the Army’s newest training model, the Decisive Action Training Environment. DATE prepares the paratroopers to operate in an austere environment against an adaptable and multifaceted enemy. However, combat against an opposing army and counterinsurgency operations are not the only possibilities.
“There are other uses for the Global Response Force,” said Palisca. “Take Haiti and the earthquake … in 2010. The 82nd was on the ground shortly after the president directed it. [He] has the ability to very quickly put this flag and this uniform and everything we need for a humanitarian assistance/disaster relief situation on the ground. Who else can do that? We have a unique mission of which we’re exceptionally proud, and certainly ready to execute.”
Individual equipment has evolved to meet the modern needs of the paratrooper. Knowing that today’s paratroopers’ loads of equipment are heavier than those from wars and decades past, the 82nd Abn. Div. has fully transitioned to the new T11 parachute.
“The entire need for the T11 parachute system is to get a greater amount of paratroopers to the fight and keep them from getting injured on the actual airborne operation itself,” said Sgt. 1st Class Taylor Walthers, an instructor at the Advanced Airborne School.
The division has worked with the AAS to update the Airborne Standard Operating Procedures to help make a paratrooper “ready to fight from the harness,” including jumping with their Tactical Assault Panel worn, rather than packed away. The AAS and division’s 2nd BCT are also fine-tuning the procedures for in-flight rigging of the T11 parachutes — a crucial capability for an area of operation that is hours away from home station or forward-established bases.
“The modern paratrooper can do it bigger, better, faster and from farther away,” said Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas Oherron, also an instructor for the AAS. “The 82nd Abn. Div. establishes the baseline for everything going forward for a large force that can search and seize an airfield.”
If they jump into a hostile environment, or into a country with severely degraded air, ground, and sea transport routes, carrying as much as possible may be the only way the task force sustains itself at first.
“All you have is what fell out of the sky,” said Palisca.“Getting the airfield open is your lifeline.”
The task of getting the airfield open is foremost in the minds of the division’s mobility and counter-mobility experts: the engineers. For this task, the airborne engineer battalions maintain Light Airfield Repair Packages, which can always be tailored to meet projected mission requirements. The LARP consists of the tools, vehicles and supplies necessary to make quick repairs to the airfield. The LARP is parachuted in and is followed by airborne engineers, who painstakingly, but rapidly, clear and open the flight landing strip within hours of hitting the ground. As soon as they are finished, much of the LARP’s equipment can immediately be used to construct protective fighting positions.
“We start off completely self-sustained,” said Sgt. Stephen Shelton, a horizontal construction engineer assigned to the 1st BCT. “We’ll jump in, secure, clear, repair and sustain any airfield runway so that follow-on forces can continue to build combat power.”
The division has made significant contributions to the Army’s fires community with the fielding of new digitally-networked, GPS-equipped mortars and howitzers, and the training necessary to incorporate that equipment into the airborne mission. The varied sizes of indirect fire weapons ensure that delivery can cover wide and overlapping ranges and then transition to smaller, more precise effects as maneuvering paratroopers get closer to their objective.
Just one example is the Army’s recent and ongoing fielding of the division’s BCTs with the M119A3 howitzers. With GPS to help the crews emplace the guns and adjust fire, the upgrade makes the Division’s artillery quicker and even more precise than they were before.
“It can be parachuted in as well as sling loaded with helicopters and with its digital capabilities, crews can put rounds on target as fast as four minutes after emplacing,” said Staff Sgt. Rafael Docarmo, a howitzer section chief with the 1st BCT. “We still maintain manual gunnery skills if the digital capabilities malfunction. With those assets, the M119A3 provides the 82nd Abn. Div. a great advantage on airborne and air assault operations.”
Unmanned aerial vehicles have also made substantial leaps in technology and capability and have grown far beyond simply providing intelligence and reconnaissance on the enemy. The Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System is a brigade asset that gives a commander an added tool for control over his battle space and can be used to retransmit communications in spite of line-of-sight obstacles and can be used as a forward observer to call for fire.
“The Shadow TUAS is a major force-multiplier because it will be a command and control element for the airborne commander prior to jumping onto a drop zone,” said Sgt. Daniel Grumbach, a TUAS operator for the 1st BCT. “This aircraft can take real-time image updates of a drop zone prior to paratroopers exiting, and through the radio RETRANS [retransmit] capability will allow him to communicate with his Paratroopers on the ground, before they’re even out of their harnesses. When we link into the artillery systems, we can change the guns on-target time, from an average of five to seven minutes, down to two to three minutes, and keep a fister [forward observer] out of danger areas.”
Once on the ground, a commander needs to have an idea of what aircraft are in the skies above the battle space. The Army’s Tactical Airspace Integration System can’t be airdropped because of the expensive and delicate equipment inside the truck. In order to get an “air picture” within those critical moments on the drop zone, 2nd BCT paratroopers devised a solution they could jump within their rucksacks. The brigade’s aviation element and communications section developed a way to power the TAIS with radio batteries so they could develop a real-time view of the skies within minutes.
“It’s saving the Army a lot of money by using systems that are already in place so that we don’t have to buy any more,” said Staff Sgt. Kevin Maldonado, an aviation operations specialist assigned to the 2nd BCT. “By using the same systems we have, the same equipment we’ve purchased and the same contracting we’ve already done, we’re saving millions of dollars.”
The technology-provided situational awareness and communication with either theater or subordinate commanders can now begin long before the commander exits the aircraft. Thanks to equipment that can provide digital communications and live updates from the battlefield via satellite and Air Force UAV feeds, joint task force and brigade commanders can communicate with each other, allowing them to make decisions or changes to the plan while they’re en-route to the operation.
The 82nd Abn. Div. has also begun changing to align with the Army’s BCT 2020 organization model. The Army’s infantry and armor brigades will add a third maneuver battalion, consolidate forward observers within the artillery battalions, and add additional engineer capabilities, including an increased route clearance capability. Much of the division has already reorganized to meet BCT 2020, a move that will enhance the brigades’ lethality and flexibility while also helping to meet the Army’s personnel drawdown requirements.
As the Army seeks to incorporate women into combat jobs previously closed to them, the 82nd Abn. Div. has placed women officers into leadership roles within the 18th Fires Brigade’s field artillery platoons. This year, the division has begun adding enlisted women from the artillery branch as well. Lt. Col. Christopher Valeriano, the commander of the 3rd Battalion, 321st Field Artillery Regiment, the first battalion in the division to add women to units previously closed to them, emphasized the importance of maintaining a culture of respect and loyalty within the ranks.
“When I jump out of an airplane in the middle of the night and I land next to somebody else, I’ve got to trust them,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what gender they are.”
In order to effectively project a capability around the world, the Army recognizes the need to work closely with foreign nation’s militaries. Recently, the Airborne Division has begun to work closely with America’s allies, building towards interoperability with Paratroopers from nations around the globe. By incorporating British and Canadian paratroopers into their Joint Readiness Training Center rotation in August, the 2nd BCT hopes to bridge potential gaps in technology, equipment and tactics. The division has also sent its paratroopers to a variety of our allies’ training events abroad, achieving a more cohesive fighting force with our partners than can be achieved by simply observing each other’s training.
“What we have learned is that armies working together can deliver progress,” said British Army Brig. Giles Hill, the deputy commanding general-interoperability for the division, who is the first to serve in this role. “We have a responsibility to prepare for any future operations. No one can predict what the next operation will be, whether it will require a multinational element or it won’t, but should the 82nd contribute to the Global Response Force require multinational capability, we’re good to go to provide that as an option.”
This year’s All American Week theme, “Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of D-Day and the Paratrooper,” is a suitable way to celebrate how history has molded the division through decades of combat and worldwide presence to become one of the nation’s most versatile and adaptable forces. The liberation of Europe in World War II, contingency response operations throughout the Cold War in the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama, and recent liberation and nation-building efforts in the Middle East have all contributed experience, tactics and assets to the division’s arsenal. Their reach is long and their posture is always ready. The 82nd Abn. Div. has earned its title as America’s Guard of Honor and stands poised to add to its illustrious history in the future by being the forefront of strategic deployability and contingency response capabilities.
| Date Taken: | 05.23.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 05.23.2014 20:36 |
| Story ID: | 131003 |
| Location: | FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 2,012 |
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