Photo By Lt. Col. Randall Stillinger | On June 24, the 36th CAB teamed with personnel from the Air Guard and the 1-19th...... read more read more
FORT BLISS, Texas - When lives are at stake, only the quick and coordinated efforts of well-trained service members will enable mission success and a safe return home. When different units and assets come together for a single goal, communication and training are essential For the troops of the 36th Combat Aviation Brigade, the 1-19 Special Forces Group and the Texas Air Guard, this means treating each scenario and simulation like the real thing.
Such was the case June 24 when these three outfits came together for a massive air assault and medical evacuation exercise at Camp McGregor, N.M., near Fort Bliss, El Paso.
“This went really well,” said CW2 Andreas Turner, a pilot with the 2-149 Aviation. “It coincided exactly with what kind of training we’ve been doing.”
The event began with CH-47 Chinook helicopters delivering the ground troops designated to clear and control the area. These forces included Soldiers with the 1-19 Special Forces Group and Airmen from the Air National Guard’s Security Forces. Throughout the surface conflict, troops called for air assault fire and executed their room clearing procedures with trained accuracy.
“It’s good how we work with different assets like aviation,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jamie Garza, team leader with C Company, 1-19 Special Forces Group. “It’s something that we would most likely do in a real deployment. Also, working with the Air Force, where they might be securing another part of an objective for us.”
Members of the 36th Combat Aviation Brigade served as the opposition forces, role-playing combatants, civilians and aggressors who American troops may encounter overseas.
“One of the good things that we’ve got today,” Sgt. Edward Thorne, supply sergeant for 2-149 Aviation, “is that we’ve actually going to be able to use simunition rounds and actually do live fire. We’re gonna see where we make our hits. We’re gonna see how our training’s been and what we’ve been trained up to."
Following successful clearing of the urban terrain, the ground troops then encountered a wounded combatant, requiring a call for medical evacuation and a skilled team of aviation medics capable of retrieving the casualty within minutes.
“As per all medevac operations,” said Turner, “we were on call. We received the call to conduct hoist operations to extract a patient. We got on scene, extracted the patient and returned back to the combat hospital. Everything was good to go.”
With the casualty recovered and the mission complete, the soldiers and airmen on the ground executed a perfect extraction the same way they arrived, with support from the aviation brigade’s Chinook aircraft.
It’s unit cohesion,” said Thorne. “It’s pulling all the different parts of the element, whether we’re air, ground, in the rear. It pulls all the elements together to work together as a team. It gets us familiarizing ourselves with who we have and what their capabilities are.”
With several deployments in the coming year for the aviation brigade and the Special Forces group, this exercise represented a solid step toward ensuring our service members are trained and prepared for engagements overseas.
“It was very realistic,” said Turner. “I think overall it was a great success; we learned a lot.”
| Date Taken: | 06.24.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 06.28.2012 21:28 |
| Story ID: | 90801 |
| Location: | FORT BLISS, TEXAS, US |
| Web Views: | 231 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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