Story by Spc. Jonathan Montgomery
Third U.S. Army Public Affairs Office
EGYPT - For nearly two and a half decades, a multinational exercise conducted biennially in Egypt has enhanced military cooperation between the United States and its coalition partners by strengthening joint commitment to regional stability and their mutual interests.
Bright Star, as the exercise is called, is an important part of the U.S. Central Command theater engagement strategy, and is designed to improve readiness and interoperability and has strengthened relationships between the United States, Egypt and participating forces from France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, the Netherlands, United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.
It is one of many military exercises USCENTCOM conducts in its area of responsibility, which spans from the Horn of Africa to Southwest Asia, and it is Army Central Command's largest and USCENTCOM's premier OCONUS, or outside the continental United States, exercise.
This year's Bright Star, like its predecessors, is planned to demonstrate the United States" training capability to respond to various contingencies around the world.
"It's going to be real world communications where we're allowed to deploy a large force---more than 3,000 pieces of equipment and 5,000 personnel---and establish an infrastructure like a small city then redeploy," said Armando Llamas, a Bright Star 2005 planning and deployment officer and retired U.S. Army major who participated in Bright Star 1997. "You're going to see engineers doing construction and setting up prime power, operating water purifying units and military police handling force protection."
The Bright Star exercise traces its roots back to Egypt's signing of the 1979 Camp David Peace Accord. It was shortly after this that the U.S. military began to train side-by-side with their Egyptian military counterparts in the Sahara desert. What began as small unit training has now evolved into a multi-national computer-aided command post exercise and a tactical air, ground, naval and special operations forces field training exercise involving about a dozen countries and more than 70,000 troops.
The multinational forces endeavor consists of three main segments: affiliation training, a computer-aided command post exercise, and a field training exercise. Affiliation training includes small unit training to familiarize participants with equipment, tactics, and training procedures in preparation for the field training exercise.
The computer-aided command post exercise is designed to test the coalition leadership's command-and-control standard operating procedures at the operational level of war. The field training exercise is designed to practice coalition staff coordination with troops.
Bright Star was first conducted in the summer of 1980 as a single service bilateral ground maneuver event involving only ground forces from the United States and Egypt. In 1981, similar bilateral ground maneuvers were conducted with a larger force from both countries. With this increase in troop size, the logistics involved in conducting the exercise grew as well. As a result, in 1983 a decision was made to make Bright Star a biennial event, which it has been ever since. However, it remained only a bilateral ground forces event.
Bright Star began to evolve in 1985 as air forces of both the United States and Egypt were added to the then ground force only exercise. This marked the beginning of Bright Star as a joint endeavor for the Unite States, meaning more than one U.S. service was involved. Special forces and naval forces of both countries joined the exercise in 1987.
The Bright Star exercise grew again in 1996 when the United States and Egypt added the North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations of France, United Kingdom and Germany, along with the United Arab Emirates. In 1998, these countries added Kuwait as the seventh participating nation, turning what had started as a small-unit-in-training event to one of the largest exercises involving U.S. troops anywhere in the world.
Bright Star 1999-2000, which was the eleventh in the series and the most significant, set the foundation for future ambitious coalition operations. The coalition had increased with the addition of the Netherlands, Italy, Greece and Jordan and included the armed forces of 11 nations and more than 70,000 troops. The U.S. component included more than 2,000 Marines and 18,000 total U.S. military personnel training in the exercise.
Thirty-three observer countries were also represented at Bright Star 99-00. While these countries did not have troops actively participating in Bright Star, they all had representatives on site to learn and see how the coalition operates. The nations with observer status were Algeria, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Burundi, Canada, China, Congo, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Syria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
During the exercise scenario, coalition forces helped defend Egypt as "hostile forces" tried to take control of the Nile River. The overall exercise scenario involved "Orangeland" (the enemy) located in the western half of Egypt, and "Greenland" (an ally) in the eastern half. Orangeland, which has been hostile toward Greenland for several years, invaded Greenland a few months earlier so that they could have access to the waterways of the Nile. They got halfway to the Nile before Greenland could stop them, but Greenland couldn't push them back out of the country. Thus, the coalition came to help.
The Pentagon made the decision in 2003, as it did in 1992 for the Gulf War, to cancel the Bright Star exercise scheduled for that year in view of continued operations in the global war on terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by the United States and other nations.
More than 70,000 service members from U.S. Central Command's Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and special operations forces components, along with military forces from Egypt and nine other nations, are participating in Bright Star 05/06, which is scheduled to take place Sept. 10 through Oct. 3.
Bright Star 05/06 is the largest and most significant coalition military exercise conducted by U.S. Central Command. This exercise is an important part of U. S. Central Command's theater engagement strategy and is designed to improve readiness and interoperability and strengthen the military and professional relationships among U.S., Egyptian and the other participating forces.
Bright Star