As the Army plans for its future warfighting needs, experts are looking at ways to solve existing and emerging concerns to help the U.S. military maintain its strategic advantages over a myriad of threats on a variety of potential battlefields around the globe.
One of the ways this is accomplished here is through a series of experiments called Phalanx Forge, organized by Fort Leonard Wood’s Maneuver Support Capability Development Integration Directorate, which is organized under Army Futures Command. And this week, MS CDID is partnering with the U.S. Army Engineer School to host a tabletop experiment here focused on Army Engineer roles in what’s called a division wet-gap crossing. Those roles include providing bridging capability to the Army, along with training Soldiers — Army Bridge Crewmembers, commonly called 12 Charlies, for their 12C military occupational specialty, attend 14 weeks of one station unit training here to learn how to construct bridges and rafts that carry Soldiers and equipment across bodies of water and dry gaps.
According to Kyle Henry, MS CDID’s Experimentation Branch chief at the Maneuver Support Battle Lab — who was part of the planning team for this experiment — Phalanx Forge serves as a venue for the MS CDID to understand and tackle the most complex, urgent issues facing the Protection Army warfighting function community today and to bring together subject matter experts and stakeholders “to better understand our limitations and provide potential solutions.”
The goal of this experiment, Henry added, is to pool the years of knowledge and experience the attendees bring to develop draft concepts of operation for division wet-gap crossings in the 2040 timeframe, gain a better understanding of current limitations and determine action needed to overcome those limitations.
One of the Engineer School attendees, Maj. Richard Jones, the Army National Guard Force Integrator for USAES, said experiments like this provide chances for the Army to look more closely at current tactics, techniques and procedures to see where updates must come into effect — all in an effort to, “balance out what we need to do, what we need to build upon, where we stand today, and progressing forward, to where we can be a more competitive, dominant force in the future.”
“What we do is we take those (TTPs) then, and we analyze it and say, ‘Ok, this is where we’re at; this is what we’re going to do; this is what we need.’ And it allows us to better project into the future, instead of just sitting in a singular spot,” Jones said. “If we don’t progress, then we die.”
As finding the best solutions to complex modernization efforts typically involves a vast arena of roles and responsibilities, an “all-hands approach” is required, Henry said. Phalanx Forge experiments bring together experts from each warfighting function’s CDID — including Mission Command, Maneuver, Sustainment, Medical, Intel, Aviation, Cyber and more — along with science and technology partners, specifically the Engineer Research and Development Center and U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command.
Jones said all these organizations’ inputs help provide, “the overall picture.”
“The overall experience itself, not only does it allow you to get out with all the other CDIDs and all the other centers of excellence, you get the overall picture from the maneuver side of the house, from the sustainment side of the house, from the engineer side of the house, from maneuver support, protection — the whole nine yards,” Jones said.
Going forward, Henry said “follow-on efforts” will be made over the coming years, to include both large-scale simulations and measuring the effects of future formations and capabilities.
“Long-term success hinges on ensuring capabilities — most of which are in the science and technology world — and the resources associated with developing them, are prioritized, helping ensure the Army of 2040 can defeat a peer adversary,” Henry said.
| Date Taken: | 12.07.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 12.07.2023 16:28 |
| Story ID: | 459433 |
| Location: | FORT LEONARD WOOD, MISSOURI, US |
| Web Views: | 252 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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