Georgian soldiers, assigned to Charlie Company, 12th Light Infantry Battalion, 1st Infantry Brigade, transport a simulated casualty while conducting an urban attack training event during Exercise Combined Resolve V at the U.S. Army's Joint Multinatio...
Royal Netherlands Army Staff Sgt. Peter De Graaf, left, and Cpl. Björn Graafland, of 112th Armored Engineering Company, 45th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 43rd Mechanized Brigade, dig an observation point with a Leopard 1 Combat Engineering Veh...
A Romanian soldier, assigned to Delta Company, 191st Infantry Battalion, 18th Infantry Brigade, scans his sector of fire from an Armored Personnel Carrier 79 while conducting an advance to contact training scenario during Exercise Combined Resolve V ...
A U.S. Soldier, assigned to 3rd Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, provides security while Soldiers provide medical aid to a simulated casualty during Exercise Combined Resolve V at the U.S. Army's Joint Multin...
U.S. Soldiers, assigned to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment pull security while operating a Bradley Fighting Vehicle during defensive operations during Exercise Combined Resolve V at the U.S. Army's Joint Multinational Readiness Cent...
Dutch Soldiers, assigned to 112th Armored Engineering Company, 45th Mechanized Infantry Battalion, 43rd Mechanized Brigade, advance on a simulated enemy's location while conducting an area reconnaissance mission during Exercise Combined Resolve V at ...
HOHENFELS, Germany (Nov. 8, 2015) -- Exercise Combined Resolve V, or CBRV, has set a new course for multinational training at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, or JMRC.
Combined Resolve V is designed to exercise the U.S. Army's regionally-allocated force to the U.S. European Command area of responsibility with multinational training at all echelons.
During the exercise, the training units come together in Hohenfels, Germany, for decisive action training environment scenario, and then move to Grafenwoehr to conduct a combined-arms, multinational live-fire exercise.
As the fifth iteration of this series, one might expect it to be a routine, tactics-focused exercise. Instead, Combined Resolve at JMRC intentionally defies this expectation. By bringing together 4,600 allies and partners from 13 nations, CBRV forces not just different units, but Soldiers from many nations to work together for the first time to achieve their training objectives.
The primary U.S. training unit is the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division (1/3 Infantry Division, or ID), stationed on Fort Stewart, Georgia. Simultaneous with CBRV, the brigade has a battalion supporting NATO's Exercise Trident Juncture in Spain, and is supporting Operation Atlantic Resolve in Eastern Europe.
Immediately following the exercise, 1/3 ID, a Romanian-mechanized infantry battalion and a Georgian infantry company will return to Grafenwoehr to participate in a multinational combined-arms, live-fire exercise with observer coach trainers from JMRC overseeing the operation.
"One of the biggest challenges we faced during Combined Resolve was how to take Soldiers from nine different countries and bring them together to create a single Task Force," said Maj. Matthew Dawson, executive officer for 1st Armored Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division.
"Leaders at all levels had to be creative in solving complex problems of how to communicate among formations that have different equipment, creating a truly interoperable force. These lessons learned will be invaluable as we get ready to conduct a multinational combined-arms, live-fire exercise."
While operating in the training area, they have worked to integrate a combined Romanian-Bulgaria-Albanian and Georgian battalion, a Dutch battalion, and companies from across the NATO Alliance.
"The environment here is very close to reality. We have been in theaters of operations [all over] and we experienced a lot of things," said Lt. Col Claudio Topor, commander of 191st Infantry Battalion from Romania. "Being in this type of environment and in a short time go to have real ammunition in a live-fire exercise is a good next step in our training."
Integration and cooperation is key for CBRV, but "interoperability is more than just understanding [communications and equipment]," Topor said. "It's understanding the capability of each of us, what we can do together how can we train together to be successful in the fight."
JMRC has been able to take this interoperability to the next level in CBRV by bringing in three different nations to augment the permanent opposing forces, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, at the training center. Slovenia has permanently stationed four T-72 tanks here to provide critical firepower to the battalion.
Additionally, the German army provided a platoon of Leopard A2 tanks to the battalion as well, making them a fully-lethal modern combat force. Rounding out the augmentation forces, Norway contributed an intelligence company to create a robust intelligence architecture to the task force.
All of this speaks to the fact that multinational training at JMRC is fundamentally different from what Soldiers, no matter the country, experience at home station. By bringing together Soldiers from across the alliance, training them from the squad to the brigade level and discovering solutions to the real challenges or integration, JMRC is improving the alliance one rotation at a time.
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