FORT BLISS, Texas (Jan. 13, 2015) -- Battery A, 4th Battalion, 3rd Air Defense Artillery, 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, conducted an Emergency Deployment Response Exercise at McGregor Range, New Mexico, Dec. 12-14 to ensure its Patriot missile launchers met test and mission requirements.
The Air Defense Artillery, or ADA, assumed the mission as part of the Army's global response force in early November 2014, and within a month, began executing the training requirements.
"This exercise today was supposed to be a simple alert and deploy the battery and conduct a live fire," said Maj. Patrick Lowry, the operations officer, 4th Battalion, 3rd Air Defense Air Artillery Regiment, 31st ADA Brigade. "We ended up expanding the exercise a little bit more on our end in order to fully exercise our abilities to alert and deploy a full battery in accordance with our contingency mission...so it gave us a chance to test our processes and to actually prove our concept that we can deploy an element of a patriot battalion pretty much anywhere...in seven days."
That expansion, was to actually validate the battery's equipment, with the air defenders accomplishing what they were trained to do.
Sgt. Edward Han, squad leader, 4th Battalion, 3rd ADA Regiment, 31st ADA Brigade, is the most experienced when it comes to Patriot missile launches that involve short periods of time during emergencies.
"I have done this before in Israel. It was a training mission to do a live fire, similar to what we are doing here," Han said.
The Stockton, California, native took his team out to set up the launcher and get it ready to fire. Han claimed it was an honor to be out at McGregor Range, New Mexico, and put a live round down range. The fact is, not many air defense Soldiers get to actually launch the equipment in a live fire exercise because the airspace at Fort Sill is not adequate for a live fire launch. This restricts the Soldiers to do only simulation exercises.
"This is a great training event, especially for our unit," Han said. "I feel it will go smooth."
Capt. Jessica Perales, commander 4th Battalion, 3rd ADA Regiment, 31st ADA Brigade, agreed with Han. One of her goals for her battery was to ensure her Soldiers got that opportunity to see their equipment in action.
"I have a lot of new Soldiers," Perales said. "For them to see their equipment that they maintain and they train on actually fire a missile, well, that gives them confidence in their equipment and that we have the ability to do our mission anywhere in the world. When that missile comes out of that can, I will know we have validated."
After a few maintenance fixes and attempts at launching, two missiles were fired Dec. 14. This gave the warm and fuzzy that Perales needed for her unit, confirming that her unit is a "T" for trained at that station, and her unit is fully ready to head out the door within 96 hours.
"I am excited that we got to validate for a possible deployment anywhere in the world," Perales said. "I am very proud of my unit and I am glad to be a part of this mission."
Now that the unit proved that the concept can be done successfully, the goal for the battalion is to make it a more routine thing for the remaining units within the 31st ADA Brigade.
"Not only was this a chance for us to prove our ability to be a part of the global response force," Lowry said, "it gave us a chance to actually launch our equipment with live missiles."
For six months, the unit will conduct this mission. They have set the standard for the other battalions in 31st ADA Brigade, who will inherent the mission on a rotational basis.
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