Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Jason Hull | Paratroopers of the British 16 Air Assault Brigade conduct an assault on an enemy...... read more read more
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FORT BRAGG, N.C. — Meticulously placed cards bearing symbols and acronyms lay across intersecting squares of parachute cord on the grey concrete of the pole barns. The wind drifts under the sheet metal roof, unimpeded by walls, and pushes gently on the paper markers placed all over the map that is laid out before hundreds of booted feet.
One by one, officers and noncommissioned officers step onto the sand table and brief the Task Force Falcon staff, commanders and attached enablers on the actions of the enemy, terrain and weather of the area of operation, movements of friendly forces, areas of surveillance, and targets for indirect fire weapons.
The combined arms rehearsal is nothing new to the assembled service members. Most have participated in them or observed them before. However, uniformity was wholly disrupted by a myriad of blue, tan, brown, green and gray uniforms. For many, this particular briefing was different for the variety of Soldiers, Airmen and Marines, both American and British, with interests in this exercise.
After more than two years of planning, the routine Joint Operational Access Exercise held on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was now a Combined-JOAX, as the 82nd Airborne Division’s interoperability program reached a major milestone in it’s efforts to incorporate a British battle group into one of the brigade combat teams.
“The combined nature is the most obvious difference,” said Col. Joseph Ryan, commander of the Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team. “This one is working with our brothers from … the 3rd Battalion, [The Parachute Regiment] of the 16 Air Assault Brigade from the U.K.”
“We’ve had about eight or 900 of them over here for … about six weeks, conducting an intensive train up.”
Beginning in mid-March, the task force partnered up for the typical training, ranges, mission planning and rehearsals that go into preparation for large exercises. Day-to-day, they collaborated in the headquarters, dining facilities, motor pools and clinics. Not simply observing or sitting on the sidelines, both organizations labored to smooth out the battle rhythms.
Finally, at P-hour on April 13, C-17 Globemaster III and C-130 Hercules engines roared through the new-fallen darkness as the equipment and Paratrooper-laden, aircraft flew over Holland Drop Zone. U.S. and Royal Air Force planes began exiting thousands of American and British jumpers. The largest bilateral exercise Fort Bragg has seen in nearly 20 years had begun.
“This was a seven-day exercise beginning with a joint forcible entry, last Monday, that saw 2,100 Paratroopers exiting from 23 aircraft, including two British aircraft, onto a drop zone,” said Lt. Col. Mike Shervington, commander of the British 3 PARA. “That was the first major way-point that we had to hit. Subsequent to them, we had a bunch of Company-group air assaults. We had a noncombatant evacuation operation. We had some ambushes. We had some [chemical and biological weapon] operations. A whole level of low-level drills building up towards the end of the exercise being this battle-group attack to destroy this training camp.”
There were extraordinary efforts and resources put into C-JOAX 15-01 by both of the airborne organizations and it had to accomplish a number of significant effects, according to the task force’s commander.
“I would say there are several… purposes for this exercise,” said Ryan. “The first is interoperability: ensuring seamless integration of a U.K. battle group, a battalion-sized formation, under the mission command and control of a U.S. brigade combat team.”
However, proving the seamless integration of an Anglo-American task force was only one of the key objectives. As always, JOAX validates the ability of the 82nd Abn. Div. and its Air Force partners to fulfill the Global Response Force mission.
“Always, and every time we train, it’s readiness,” continued Ryan. “It’s rapid deployability. Readiness is our watchword here in the 82nd Abn. Div. We have to be prepared to go at a moment’s notice.”
Advertising that capability, especially as part of a multinational force, is paramount to the effort of keeping peace in a tumultuous and often violent world.
“We always want to get after the third purpose of this, which is communicating our readiness and our interoperability globally to our allies, for readiness, and to our enemies, our foes, to make sure they understand what we can do on a moment’s notice as well,” Ryan concluded.
Since 9/11, the effort to combat terrorism throughout the world demonstrates the larger defense and security needs that have drawn the cooperation of many U.S. allies into a relationship that will continue to strengthen and endure. As a rapid response force for the U.K., 16 Air Assault shares a mission similar to the 82nd Abn. Div.
"We’re going to be there first on the doorstep to come with you,” said Shervington. “That’s what multinational interoperability is all about.”
Building that multinational contingency response capability is not as easy as parachuting into and conducting a field training exercise together. C-JOAX resolved some of the friction inherent to absorbing another country’s battle group into a BCT, but it also proposed other challenges.
“We’ve had great success but we’ve also had some areas where we’ve learned some lessons,” said Ryan. “Mission command is many times … our defeat mechanism. If we don’t do it well, we’re going to lose. We pay a lot of attention to it when we’re working our interoperability issues with the U.K.”
The commander of 3 PARA agreed that it takes much more than just discussions and observations. Both forces have to get their hands dirty with rigorous, complex training and subordinate commanders have to execute successfully.
“De-confliction does not equal interoperability,” said Shervington. “We smashed both organizations together onto one airfield, for one JFE, for one mission set, for a whole series of subsequent tasks, so that I could prosecute all of the mission sets he asked me to. That’s interoperability,” he said. “And that’s generated a whole bunch of issues that we need to resolve.”
While challenges indeed lie ahead, Ryan seemed optimistic of the future of the interoperability program and what it will take to strengthen and solidify the capability.
“Paratroopers share much of the same qualities worldwide,” said Ryan. “We are pushing the boundaries of what we can do through seamless integration of that force under our mission command and testing the limits to see where they fail across all war fighting functions.”
True to the tenets of the interoperability program, Shervington is on the same page as the task force commander.
“I can’t even begin to describe to you the amount we’ve taken away from operational lessons about getting into the fight, to tactical lessons about winning the fight, and sustaining the fight,” said Shervington. “Across those three areas, the list is long on both sides … where we both compliment each other so well.”
The final, major mission of the exercise put the Brigade’s interoperability to the test with the placement of a company from the 2nd BCT’s 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment and various Army enablers under Shervington’s command and in support of 3 PARA. The battle group assaulted a staunchly defended enemy training facility and subsequently recovered a high-value target.
“Every step of this 24-hour operation, we had American call signs involved in mission execution,” said Shervington. “In order to achieve that mission, and to prosecute it successfully, I could only do it with a series of U.S. combat enablers, a rifle company, [human intelligence] enablers, tactical [psychological operations] teams, and [expeditionary digital support liaison teams].”
“When you combine all of those enablers, plus the aviation element to get us into the fight, and add that to 3 PARA and what we bring to the fight, and you have a very, very capable and powerful force able to achieve the full mission set.”
| Date Taken: | 04.21.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 04.22.2015 11:44 |
| Story ID: | 160804 |
| Location: | FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Hometown: | COLCHESTER, ESSEX, GB |
| Web Views: | 266 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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