Date: 16-Oct-2024

Moderator

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I wanted to give a quick few minutes and let you know how this is going to go. Due to scheduling, it looks like this roundtable will run about 30 minutes. As time allows, each journalist will get one question when we get to that point, and we'll have one follow-up, after which I'll mute your mic. And I will unmute your mics as we move forward. And then we'll move on to the next questioner. Remember, the topic of today's discussion is experimentation and modernization. This webinar is hosted by General Darryl Williams, commanding general of US Army Europe and Africa. Joining General Williams here in the room is Lieutenant General Charles Costanza, Commanding General, V Corps, Major General John Rafferty, Commanding General, 56th Artillery Command, Major General Ronald Ragin, Commanding General, 21st Theater (Sustainment) Command, and Command Sergeant Major Dennis Doyle of 2nd Cavalry Regiment. And with that, I will hand it over to General Williams, sir.

Gen. Darryl Williams, Commanding General, US Army Europe and Africa

Hey, good morning, everybody. And thanks for being on today. We're really happy to be here. I'm happy to be here with some of my teammates from Germany. We've gotten over our jet lag, so we're ready to talk to you a little bit and take whatever questions you might have. The first thing I will tell you is that I'm going to do some opening sort of framing points and then turn it over to the commanders who are at the tactical edge and the Command Sergeant Major. There's a great sense of urgency in Europe. I know you all know a lot of the reasons why. Our secretary pointed that out on the first day of the annual AUSA conference that our adversaries are not going to sit back and let us set the pace. So United States Army in both Europe and Africa is in contact at the nexus of multiple threads, right? We support three combatant commands in Europe and Africa, and these are all land-dominant sets. So I think it's critical to the army that we continue to learn from what we're seeing in both Europe and Africa. My assessment, Russia is an acute and persistent threat. When the war in Ukraine ends, we will still have a long-term and perhaps an even bigger Russia problem. So that's why us talking to you today is very, very important. We are transforming in contact as you've probably heard my chief, Randy George, talk about that. And we've got a number of elements that are doing that. Down at the tactical edge, you'll hear more about that in a second with the mighty 3/10 Mountain, who's in Germany right now, all over Europe, actually. Based in Romania, but all over Europe. But we'll do their transformation formally in Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels in January. We'll invite you to that if you'd like to come. Our 56th Fires, you'll hear in a second, is doing it right now as well as the 21st. And just a couple other points before we pass it around the table here. As the USAREUR-AF commander, I'm also the LANDCOM commander, too, in my NATO role. So I support Chris Cavoli in all things NATO. And I will tell you, the real operative word there is convergence. We are converging both my headquarters and also our NATO fight. But warfighting is our number one priority here in USAREUR-AF. So I think I'll stop there and hand it over to Charlie and look forward to your questions that you may have. Thank you.

Lt. Gen Charles Costanza, Commanding General, V Corps

Hey, good morning, everybody. I'm Charlie Costanza. I'm the V Corps commander. And so I'm responsible for the rotational US forces from Estonia all the way down to Bulgaria on the eastern flank of Europe. And then I've also got three brigades that are permanently stationed in Germany. And so I'm going to talk about two things real briefly. And then Sergeant Major Doyle is going to hit some of this and talk about what 2nd Calvary Division is, sorry, 2nd Calvary Regiment is doing when it comes to transformation and modernization. But I'm going to talk about US transformation first, and then I'll talk about NATO transformation for a bit. And so General Williams talked about 3rd Brigade, the 10th Mountain Division, Transforming, and Contact. And I want to expand a little bit on what that is. So this is the army moving quickly to get capabilities into soldiers' hands more rapidly than we have in the past. And it's also not just about the equipment piece, it's also the organization. We're going to change the shape and way that that brigade is organized. Currently, it's an Infantry Brigade Combat team, and we're going to make it more mobile and lighter and transform it into a Light Brigade Combat team. So the formation will be different, organized differently. From the equipping standpoint, from what we're watching in Ukraine, we're taking some of those lessons and quickly getting capabilities that we need in the soldier's hands. So UAS, counter-UAS, electronic warfare down to the squad level, and then integrating how we link sensor to shooter, again, down to the company level, to rapidly get after that kill chain and get after how we're going to kill the enemy at the brigade level with more capability. So just as an example, the UAS, 145 UAS from squad to brigade level, this brigade will actually execute in Hohenfels, Germany here in January. That's not the only brigade that's transforming in Europe. Our 12th Aviation Brigade based in Germany is also transforming organizationally, becoming more modern. It's just a fielded spike missile capability for its Apache helicopters. 41st Fires Brigade is also modernizing. We're making it more lethal, more capability, additional HIMARS, and building out that capability inside that unit. And then 2nd Calvary Regiment, Sergeant Major Doyle will talk about the modernization efforts that they've got going on inside that regiment as well. And then on the NATO side, as General Williams said, there is a real sense of urgency in Eastern Europe. The threat is tangible. They're on the border with Belarus and Russia. And they have moved very, very rapidly to build out headquarters capability and also field other capabilities, HIMARS, Abrams tanks, and the Poles who've just purchased 96 Apache helicopters. So they're modernizing their forces quickly with capabilities that they need. And we are helping them as they do that. So from the multinational corps level to the division level, all the way down to the individual crew, Fifth Corps is helping our NATO partners and allies implement and get those systems quickly up in the fight. The other piece that's exciting is NATO has a family of plans now. First time really in 38 years that NATO's had a new set of plans based on Russia, the threat. And what we just did last month, as you're probably aware, was we did a huge exercise where six NATO Corps underneath General William's headquarters fought together in Poland, in Lithuania against the Russians. I think that's the first time we've ever had that large of an exercise with that many corps fighting together. And we did that with multiple countries. So it was Fifth Corps. It was Polish Second Corps. It was the First German Netherlands Corps. It was multinational corps northeast and NATO Rapid Deployment Corps, Spain, all fighting together in the defense of Europe. And I'll stop there and pass it over to John.

Maj. Gen. John Rafferty, Commanding General, 56th Artillery Command

Thanks, sir. Good morning, everybody. John Rafferty, the commander of the 56th Artillery Command. Transformation is certainly a theme in the fires war fighting function across Europe with enthusiastic and aggressive partners. And we've had the opportunity in the short time that I've been there to do some great training and preparation. I'll just start with a brief description of an exercise called Arcane Thunder, primarily a multi-domain task force exercise that was conducted in Morocco, in Germany, and then reached all the way back to Fort Huachuca in Arizona. The Moroccans are great partners, so easy to train with and important and valuable partners in the region, but also provided a really unique and permissive training environment that allowed us to really get after some deep sensing experimentation from high-altitude sensors and then really work on our targeting and long-haul comms. That's an example of us continuing to develop how we deliver effects across multiple domains. The exercise that General Costanza just described, Avenger Triad, was an opportunity for us really for the first time to take these effects from different domains and converge them against multiple sets of targets. Our mission during that was kind of multifaceted. In one case, part of the reason for our existence is because of the anti-access and area denial threat that exists in Europe. So that's our big responsibility for us is to open up windows of opportunity for the joint force. The other part of our mission, though, is to shape for large-scale combat operations. And so converging multinational and multi-domain effects to support core operations was an opportunity for us to train with great allies and partners from those six corps that the General Costanza described. So our training continues right now. Our training continues really along both those facets that I described a second ago. So we're doing an exercise now for about the next seven days with the Air Force, focused primarily on A2AD. And then we lead our big exercise called Dynamic Front. And that's with 20 partner nations, an artillery exercise that runs from Finland to Romania. And that'll give us a chance to really focus on warfighting, start to refine those plans that General Costanza described a minute ago, and really take fires the next step in Europe. I'd be happy to take any questions, but I'll turn it over to General Ragin.

Maj. Gen. Ronald Ragin, Commanding General, 21st Theater Sustainment Command

Okay. Good morning. My name's Major General Ron Ragin. I'm the commander for the 21st Theater Sustainment Command. I have four directed priorities from General Williams. The first one is set the theater. And what I mean by that is just making sure we have the right stuff in the right place, not only for deterrence, but mainly if we went beyond deterrence into conflict. My second priority is to enable Ukraine. And so a lot of the sustainments, efforts working with our coalition partners, a lot of those come from my organization to keep them sustained on the battlefield. The third is supporting all the US Army elements that are part of Fifth Corps and all the other enablers that are part of URAF, both not only inside of Europe but also on the continent of Africa. And then my fourth priority is to build partner capacity. And so we work a lot with our partners and allies really to figure out in the time of conflict how would we move people and how would we keep them sustained through all phases of the operation. I would like to share with you a real short story that I recently had an engagement with several senior Ukrainians and our NATO allies and partners. And in there they asked a question to our senior Ukrainians. And it said, "Knowing what you know today, what would you have invested in five years ago?" And the answer that they said was, "That's a fair question. But the first thing that I would've invested in is ammunition production and stockpiles." In other words, magazine depth. The second thing that they said they would have invested in is maintenance capabilities in multiple locations distributed and connected. The third is hardened storage and command and control infrastructure, preferably underground or mobile.

And the reason I share that with you is because I'm using those lessons from our Ukrainian partners that are currently under strain and in contact to inform how I approach the priorities that General William has given us. And this reminds me of some universal truths in history. First, that we always underestimate the scale of ammunition and the material that's required to win in large-scale conflict. And second, the side that can probably outproduce the other side will most likely be on the victor. And the third lesson that I learned from that is that technology and innovation will always be a decisive factor. And so I'm working with not only the acquisition community, but also with the joint material enterprise to make sure that we're taking the lessons learned from Ukraine and applying it to how we move forward in the future. Thank you for the opportunity, your time, sir, Andrew.

Cmd. Sgt. Maj. Dennis Doyle, 2nd Cavalry Regiment

Good morning. This is Command Service Major Dennis Doyle, the Second Caliber Regiment, Command Service Major. We are the USAREUR-AF's Rapid Response Force that's nested and partnered with NATO allies and partners across the European theater. As you heard yesterday from the chief, General Williams and just recently from General Costanza that 2CR has been identified as the next transformation and contact brigade, which is going to allow us to go ahead and further modernize and experiment from what we're already doing with organizational design, new materials, and tactics, and some of the flow that's already coming in. As Chief was talking about, it's going to come quick, and it's going to come fast, and we're going to be getting it. And we're already starting to receive some stuff this month. But with that, though, is we talk about modernization and experimentation within 2CR. Over the last few years, based off of the fight that's in the Ukraine and just with us being right there, with the enemy at the doorstep, and then what they've been going through, we've been able to extract a lot of lessons learned that's kind of drove us to kind of think about how we do agile and adaptive command and control to how we get after enabling our partners and allies and then becoming more survivable on the battlefield.

And so when I talk about agile and adaptive command and control, it talks about being more mobile and dispersed. I'm not going to elaborate too much onto it. Maybe if you have some questions at the end, I can kind of give some more details about it. But the end of the state is that we're going to be more survivable on the battlefield, getting less people in the front, more sensors up front that are unmanned to be able to have abilities so we can communicate across the front lines easier. And then we also have this thing called Mission Partner Kits. It's the big talking point for us on the NATO Alliance because what this has done is it's a piece of equipment that allows our partners and allies to quickly integrate en route to any conflict. And what this does, it gives us four different things. It allows our partners and allies with the American forces to do voice communication that's secure with translation capabilities. It gives us chat capabilities that's secure as well with translation capabilities. And it also allows us to see each other on the battlefield. And at the end of the day, we're able to have collaborative tools for each other to synchronize efforts. And we can all do that in route. And an example of that is just recently, which is no news for anybody here is the Saber Strike back in April. It was a huge event where Second Calgary Regiment was able to not only integrate the German allies from Germany and conducted one of the largest tactical road marches in Europe since World War II, back in April. And utilizing mission partner kits, we're also able to go ahead and expand the NATO battle group to a brigade-sized element for the second time in a row, successfully, and then synchronized live fire operations while executing command and control over three areas from Lithuania, the Suwalki Gap with the Territorial Defense Forces and in BPTA, all simultaneous on the same timeframe while under one command. And what that did at the end of the day, it gave us the capacity to demonstrate to our partners and allies that UCIRF Fifth Corps and the NATO alliance is primed and ready to fight now and win as a joint force against anything that ever called the action. Sir, that's all I have.

Moderator

All right. Thank you, gentlemen. Haley Britzky, I'm going to have you go first.

Question

Thank you all for doing this. I wanted to ask: General Williams, you mentioned that when the war with Ukraine ends, you think there will be possibly even a bigger Russia threat. I'm just wondering if you can expand on that a bit and add in some more, I guess, of your observations there. And then secondly, we're hearing a lot, at AUSA, especially the last couple of days, obviously, about air defense demands around the world.

It's no new story that air defense is incredibly overtasked, a ton of demand for them everywhere, particularly, obviously, in the Middle East right now. But can we get a sense of what the air defense demands are in Europe currently? Have we seen those grow since Russia's invasion of Ukraine nearly two and a half, three years now in? Have they kind of stabilized over that time? Can you kind of just give us a sense of what we're seeing there with air defense in particular?

Gen. Williams

Haley, thank you. I appreciate the question. Yeah. A couple of different ways I'll attack this.

As the USAREUR-AF commander, what I'm seeing now on the ground is that in terms of Russian intelligence services, it's never been—I've been in and out of Europe since I was a second lieutenant. It's about 40 years. And I've never seen Europe as dynamic as it is now in terms of the threat. And the problem is the likelihood of miscalculation has never been higher because these intelligence forces that are working aren't sort of the hard-cast traditional sorts of folks that we'd envision. They're coming from multiple different-- so that's the first thought is that the risks to Russian intelligence services are very, very active. The second thing is the army is bigger than it was. The Russian Army is larger than it was when it started. Right? And they were on glide path for-- I think, 360,000 they are recruiting. And that's without mobilization over this next year. And you heard our secretary and chief talk about sort of what our numbers are. And then if you add that with the other 32 members of the alliance, that's pretty significant. So this is a Russia that's bigger, that's getting resources from other actors, right, that has a active intelligence threat that's growing like I haven't seen in some time. The number of events that we've had in and around Europe over the last four years, three and a half years is triple-fold. Every year it's grown.

We're on glide path for about 50 incidences in and around the theater here as they continue to probe up and down the spine of the alliance from the very high north all the way down to the southern part of General Cavoli's AOR. So that's what I would say in terms of still having a Russia problem because they're bigger than they were when they started. And in terms of air defense, we see that up and down the alliance. It's been a continuing concern. All of our partners are giving a lot in that space, protecting key critical notes along the spine of the alliance, offering their own assets in support of our Ukrainian partner. That is always the number one ask. We meet routinely with the Ukrainian generals, and that's always at the very top of the list. So how do we defend critical assets? We need help defending critical assets. And what can you do as an alliance to that end? So I would say we're on par with it, but that's going to be a continuing demand signal that we're going to hear from our Ukrainian partners as we go forward. Thank you for your question.

Moderator

All right. Thank you, Haley. Sam Skove.

Question

This question is for General Rafferty. I was just curious in terms of how you see transformation and contact working with indirect fire, especially when we sort of look at how Ukraine is using drones to vector and artillery on targets. Thanks.

Maj. Gen. Rafferty

Hey, Sam. Thanks. That's a great question. Yeah. The Fires Enterprise has been undergoing a significant transformation for quite some time, as you know. And definitely being informed by operations in Ukraine on both sides, frankly, because there are lessons to be learned from both sides of that conflict. So we're keeping a close eye on that. And then there's transformation that's going on right in front of us in Europe. General Costanza mentioned some of that that's going on in Fifth Corp, but particularly inside the 41st Brigade. Right? So transformation isn't necessarily just about new kit. It's about reorganizing and maybe even thickening the force. So in the case of adding more launchers to the 270 fleet, that's an important transformation for us because we've got a little bit of a size problem that we're up against. So that's important.

But the training events that I talked about, that's exactly what we're getting after. Right? It's more deep sensing from multiple platforms and sensors and every time that we get together in events like Dynamic Front, in these multinational settings, we continue to expand our kill web, right? So there's more sensors and more shooters from all our allies and partners. And one of our fundamental roles is the 56 is to build those kill webs and to speed up our sensor to shooter. So you're spot on on the transformation inside, the warfighting function, for sure. Over.

Moderator

All right. Rachel Cohen with Warzone. You are next, ma'am.

Question

Okay. Great. Could you expand a little bit on which units are going to be taking part in transformation and contact? And I guess just to kind of elaborate on if you have any specific goals for any particular tech that you're eyeing to try out, what do you want to-- what do you want to take away from this?

Lt. Gen. Costanza

Yeah, thanks for the question. So right now, 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, which is a rotational brigade that's in Europe, it is one of the transformation 1.0 brigades. So again, it's going to go to very much a light brigade combat team, so different structure. Back to the question that we had about field artillery just a little while ago and how it's transforming. One of the things that 3rd Brigade 10th Mountain is doing is they're creating a new organization. It's called a Strike Company. And what the Strike Company does is it integrates UAS capability with long-range fires, with EW, all in the same organization. So that's really coming straight out of watching what's going on in Ukraine. The other thing that that organization has is it has loitering munition capabilities, so switchblade capability. And again, it's all fused into one organization. Coming behind them over to Europe, it will be 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, which is an armored brigade combat team. And they are going to be Transformation and Contact Armor Brigade Combat Team as part of Transformation 2.0. Also, our own 2nd Cavalry Regiment is going to be a striker brigade that transforms next year into a more modern and lethal striker brigade, and they'll be part of the official transformation and contact 2.0 as well. So I hope that answered your question.

Moderator

All right. We're going to have one more question, and I'm going to ask Corey from Stars and Strikes if you'd like to ask your question.

Question

All right. Great. So I'm wondering you guys kind of have the quote-unquote, "Front row seat" to what's going on in Ukraine, obviously. I wonder how much work and feedback and information sharing you guys are doing with the CFTs and some of the experimental units like back at the MCOE, how much you guys are working together to integrate, what you guys are seeing into those experiments and then, hopefully, into the broader force down the road.

Gen. Williams

Hey, thanks. Yeah. This is General Williams again. Yeah, absolutely. At echelon, starting with the TRADOC commander, Gary Brito and with General Jim Rainey out of Futures, which I'm sure you know both of those generals well.

Absolutely. They've had a team embedded at the tactical end down in Grafenwoehr for some time, right? And so, we're able, as Sergeant Major mentioned, the Ukrainians-- in fact, we have a brigade right now being trained in Grafenwoehr as we speak. The 153rd Ukrainian brigade is there. And so, we've incorporated a lot of the things we've learned over these last two and a half years. So, the rotation, the initial brigades that are in contact, they're in combat right now, who trained at Grafenwoehr, the experience they got and the experience that the brigade that's there now is vastly different. If you come-- and we invite you to come to Grafenwoehr, I've got a brigadier general, Steve Carpenter, who runs that. It looks different. It looks like the conditions in Ukraine. So, we're learning at echelon, the strategic level, the operational level, the tactical level. We have a small element that rotates in and out of Ukraine* under the leadership of General Curtis Buzzard. And he's able to get insights on the environment in terms of the number of drones that they're flying. As you can imagine, it's a very rich environment. Thousands of drones of US. And how do you counter that? So, we're learning. Learning is taking place as we speak at the tactical level, at the operational level, to inform the strategic level at echelon. So, we've learned quite a bit, and I invite you to-- also, I don't want to take John's thunder, but John Rafferty, the 56 Fires, as well as Ron, Ron talked about some of the practical sustainment lessons they've learned about how to set a theater. So, all of my downtrace units, whether it be 10th AAMDC, 56 Fires, all of my units are all learning and incorporating these technical and technical skill sets from the battlefield and informing how we might fight in the future. Thank you.

Moderator

All right. Thanks, everyone, for joining us on this call. I really appreciate it. As always, if you have any follow-up questions or if you didn't get to answer a question, please send it to my team at media@army.mill. And with that, we will conclude this webinar. Thank you very much.

* This refers to previously announced teams of equipment inspectors who serve at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine in non-combat, non-advisory positions.