Photo By Staff Sgt. Jonathan Shaw | North Carolina Army National Guard soldiers construct a deployable rapid assembly...... read more read more
FORT BRAGG, N.C. – North Carolina Army National Guard soldiers from the 130th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade conducted their two-week long annual training this month.
For most of the 130th’s subordinate units training was fairly straightforward; The 105th and 505th Engineer Battalions made improvements to several government facilities across the state, the 105th Military Police Battalion strengthened its relationship with local emergency services and law enforcement through a nearly week-long civil disturbance exercise, and the 130th’s headquarters and headquarters company conducted a warfighter exercise with the 82nd Airborne Division.
A WFX, is similar to a command post exercise. A unit’s command staff sets up a simulated tactical operations center with all the equipment and staff they would normally have during the deployment scenario they are given. The staff then operates as if they are deployed and plan for and react to scripted events created by the group running the scenario. Subordinate units and assets don’t actually exist, but are represented notionally by one or two experts in that area in a response cell. Scenarios include receiving contact with the enemy, bridges being destroyed, indirect fire attacks, and other common tasks for the MEB like detention operations and route security, and route clearance.
WFXs have been conducted in the past but this was the first time that it had been done with a support area command post.
“Every unit that has done a warfighter has done it differently” explained Maj. William Dudley, the 130th MEB’s brigade training officer. “[SACP is] not an officially published concept yet.”
“This exercise is extremely important to the relevancy of the [130th] MEB and the MEB community,” said Col. Timothy Aiken, commander of the 130th MEB.
The SACP co-locates staff from the MEB, the division it’s supporting, and a sustainment brigade to oversee the area responsible for sustainment of communications and supplies to the division headquarters and brigade combat teams on the front lines.
MEBs are still a relatively new concept in the Army’s transition to a more modular force so hand-in-hand training like this between two units is extremely important, according to Maj. Brian McIlvane, the plans officer of the 130th. “If we deployed with the 82nd, real world, this training would be critical.”
“Throughout this exercise all of us were continuing to refine processes and identify critical positions that needed to be filled,” explained McIlvane. “We started developing some process maps and checklists that would eventually go into an SOP.”
But this kind of training exercise isn’t just useful for deployments overseas. It is at the core of an MEB’s mission.
During a deployment the role of an MEB is to bridge the gap between a corps or division headquarters, brigade combat teams, and support brigades to coordinate security and protection of the support area to allow for communication and logistical supply lines to move forward to the front line units unhindered. But that kind of support coordination also applies to the National Guard’s response force missions.
“Everything we’ve learned here can be handed right over to domestic missions in the event that we’re called for a [Command and Control Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Responsible Element] mission,” explained Aiken “The whole staff did great. I think that we’ve proved that this concept will work.”
| Date Taken: | 06.19.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 06.22.2017 13:00 |
| Story ID: | 238814 |
| Location: | FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 272 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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