Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Gray | Maj. Gen. Frank Tate, commanding general of First Army Division West, talks with...... read more read more
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As United States Army Forces Command’s designated coordinating authority for the implementation of Army Total Force policy, First Army partners with the Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserve to enable Reserve Component formations to achieve Army-directed readiness goals and to deliver trained and ready RC units to support combatant commander requirements. Since Sept. 11, 2001, First Army has trained, validated, and successfully deployed more than 1.2 million Reserve Component Soldiers in support of numerous combatant commander requirements worldwide.
But while performing those duties against a traditional adversary, a new threat has emerged. It is against an invisible enemy of coronavirus, or COVID-19. With its high transmission rates through touch and airborne methods, COVID-19 poses a different type of challenge to the military and how it trains, communicates, and moves. First Army and its Reserve Component partners are devising creative solutions to these obstacles as part of a whole-of-government approach to combating the virus.
The First Army Commanding General, Lt. Gen. Thomas James Jr., identified four essentials for the unit to focus on during the COVID-19 pandemic: Protecting our forces, protecting the nation, maintaining open and honest communication, and maintaining a positive attitude.
To protect the force and stop the spread of the virus, the Department of Defense issued a 60-day “stop-movement” order for all deploying and redeploying units and individual service members. This also means that units or individuals scheduled to go to another location for training have had their travel suspended. This presents a challenge for First Army and its partnered RC units with regard to the mobilization process and its role in protecting the nation.
“It has restricted our ability to go to our partnered RC unit locations to facilitate with their training,” said Bob Finnegan, First Army chief of operations. However, the affected units have maintained positive attitudes and open lines of communication and, according to Finnegan, units have mitigated the impact by doing some tasks virtually.
Technology, Finnegan said, “is enabling us to get after some tasks that 20 years ago we might not have been able to get after, with computer-based training and collaboration sites.”
Another initiative First Army has identified to protect the force is managing time effectively. A Department of the Army-mandated 14-day quarantine monitors redeploying Reserve Component Soldiers for symptoms of the coronavirus. The mandate for returning Soldiers could stretch the timeline to complete demobilization tasks such as health screening and administrative requirements from a standard week to 21 days or longer. However, First Army Division West, who currently oversees the current demobilization sites at Fort Bliss and Fort Hood, have creatively managed the process and found efficiencies to cut that time as much as possible.
“Division West has done a great job of mitigating some of that by trying to do demobilization tasks while they’re in quarantine, to reduce the demob time once they have been released,” Finnegan said.
Division West’s approach is enabling Reserve Component Soldiers to spend about 15 days demobilizing so they can return home.
Another challenge Soldiers of First Army and their partners are tackling is managing mobilization requirements for Reserve Component Soldiers in a constrained travel environment. Units going through mobilization have been unable to move to the Mobilization Force Generation Installations at Fort Hood and Fort Bliss to execute their post-mobilization training plans. First and foremost, certifying a unit’s mobilization readiness requires frequent communication.
“Our partnered RC units are maintaining contact with them as they are brought onto active duty until they are called forward to the MFGI,” Finnegan said.
While stop-move is affecting training, the policy is not stopping it, and First Army continues to work with its partnered RC units to find creative opportunities to train with the resources available.
“Part of it depends on what resources are available within their state for individual training, but they are also able to do computer-based training or virtually with their partnered brigade for some tasks,” Finnegan said.
First Army’s divisions are also evolving their strategies. Maj. Andrew Scott, executive officer for Division East’s 174th Infantry Brigade, talked about the assistance his unit is able to offer its Reserve Component partners during the pandemic.
“The biggest thing we are providing to them now is a headquarters to help provide some oversight and assistance with their final approach to mobilization before they get to the mobilization site,” he said.
These fluid situations require that First Army and its partners continually adapt and overcome.
“This is a unique situation and we are solving challenges we haven’t encountered before. It is absolutely a work in progress,” Scott said. “Every day we identify a new challenge we have to tackle and a new question to answer.”
Scott cited the Defense Collaboration Services platform as a technology that is helping First Army help its partnered units meet their commanders’ intent during a pandemic.
“It’s a secure Department of Defense platform for conducting teleconferences, video teleconferences, and projecting slides,” Scott explained. “The program has really helped us pull our partners in and we can do a daily commander’s update brief. We can maintain our regular battle rhythm events and it’s worked out very well and the units have adapted very well using those collaborative platforms.”
Sticking to the essentials is another way First Army and its partners are succeeding during this time.
“The team has been very supportive of each other, which is critical in this environment, and they are keeping a positive attitude,” Scott said.
Meanwhile, Soldiers of First Army and Soldiers of partnered Reserve Component units are still maintaining communication and are adapting when necessary, according to Lt. Col. Patric Nichols, chief of the First Army Plans Division.
“Units still have daily reporting requirements and much of this is still done over e-mail,” he said. “For those teleworking, Virtual Private Networks have been made available during this unique time. With the increase of the requirement to telework, VPN capacity has been expanded to meet the needs of the force.”
First Army leaders and those in their command are likewise maintaining regular and effective communication.
“Leaders and supervisors have been in daily contact with their subordinates,” Nichols said. “They do this to give guidance and to get updates on projects currently being worked by those conducting telework.
Through the use of the technology previously mentioned, the process has been very efficient.”
Through it all, focusing on the four essentials is helping First Army and its partnered RC units succeed despite the many difficulties.
“We’re handling the challenges well and it’s a complete mobilization enterprise partnership,” Finnegan said. “Through open lines of communication and cooperative relationships, we’re able to attack each of these problems and come up with solution sets for them. The teamwork and positive attitude will get us through this.”
There are many more unknowns about the ongoing pandemic and what the impacts to training and mobilization of RC formations will be. It is a fluid situation that is leadership-intensive and requires ongoing, systemic coordination with First Army’s numerous enterprise partners and RC partnered formations. However, First Army has built solid relationships with its RC and enterprise partners over the past 19 years in order to meet various readiness challenges and combatant commander requirements. First Army’s intent is to maintain connected leadership, from a socially safe distance, and to fulfill its responsibility of enabling Reserve Component readiness.
| Date Taken: | 04.10.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 04.10.2020 16:38 |
| Story ID: | 367148 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 95 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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