Photo By Capt. Jose Robledo | U.S. Army Reserve culinary specialist from the 1st Mission Support Command poses with...... read more read more
Subscribe
Camp Santiago, Puerto Rico – The 166th Regional Support Command (RSG) began the brigade’s metaphorical “Road to War” for the 1st Mission Support Command’s (MSC) annual summer exercise, Caribbean Thunder 2025 during battle assembly weekend, Feb. 22-23, 2025 at Camp Santiago, Puerto Rico.
Exercise Caribbean Thunder trains units to mobilize in support of Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) while reinforcing the 1st MSC’s capabilities in force projection and Coordinating Support for Domestic Disaster Relief (DDR). This year over 1,500 Soldiers, Sailors, and Aviators will train together in the month-long exercise spanning over 1,250km of communications lines across the Caribbean.
The 166th RSG Commander, William F. Christensen, said, “The focus of this FTX was to increase our lethality, hone our field-craft to make a large logistics organization like ours appear smaller within the battlespace both physically and electronically.”
The Brigade began the weekend by mobilizing 980 Soldiers from 22 units within 24 hours. By the end of the weekend 440 of 494 Soldiers from select companies qualified on their assigned weapons achieving an approximate 90% success rate.
“We convoyed almost 1,000 Soldiers, set up tactical assembly areas on Camp Santiago, and knocked out individual training and weapons qualifications all in preparation for our annual collective training event—Caribbean Thunder,” remarked 1st MSC Deputy Commanding Officer, Col. Martin R. Flynn, during battlefield circulation and supervision of training on Saturday, 22 February.
In addition to completing various required tasks, the 166th RSG sets the conditions for the next few months leading up to the capstone exercise for the U.S. Army Reserve in the Caribbean.
“Our Soldiers completed qualification Tables V and VI, logged 2,676 miles of convoy operations with only 12 vehicles, trained operator-level self-recovery on the Load Handling System (LHS), Light Medium Tactical Vehicle (LMTV), and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV), and trained a new batch of radio operators over four days without getting anyone hurt or losing equipment,” highlighted 390th Transportation Company (Seaport Operations), Capt. Michael Rodriguez, commander of the 346th Transportation Battalion under the 166 RSG.
“This FTX helped us to look towards the future fight. However, how we have done things in the past will not get us to victory in a future fight. We must think about the problem in front of us in different ways. This is why we are changing how we conduct concurrent training,” concluded Col. Christensen.
| Date Taken: | 02.25.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 03.18.2025 11:06 |
| Story ID: | 493004 |
| Location: | CAMP SANTIAGO, PR |
| Web Views: | 295 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 166 RSG's Road to Caribbean Thunder 2025, by CPT Jose Robledo, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
