JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD. From January 14th to 17th, more than 250 Soldiers
and Marines from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France,
Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore met to put the finishing touches on a
plan to assess the Army's cutting-edge concepts and capabilities. The event
was the final planning conference for Joint Warfighting Assessment 2019 (JWA
19).
JWA 19 is a large exercise that will train more than 4,000 Soldiers and
Marines from the Army's I Corps, 7th Infantry Division, 2-2 Stryker Brigade
Combat Team, 17th Fires Brigade, 4th Tank Battalion, 4th Marine Division, and
6 partner nations. From April 23rd to May 10th, 2019 Soldiers and Marines
will converge on two military installations in Washington State: Joint Base
Lewis-McChord and Yakima Training Center. There they will put 35 new
capabilities (technology) and concepts (ways of fighting) "in the dirt" to see
how they perform. The lessons they learn will inform the development of the
rapidly changing Army.
JWA 19 is contributing to the U.S. Modernization Strategy that Secretary of
the Army Mark Esper initiated in 2017. Secretary Esper's decade-long plan
intends to modernize the Army so that it is capable of conducting Multi-Domain
Operations (MDO): a new concept that envisions the Army rapidly and
continuously integrating the efforts of forces on land, air, sea, space, and
cyberspace to defeat nation-state aggressors. The Multi-Domain Task Force
(MDTF) is an experimental unit the Army is developing to put MDO into
practice; it is one the most important concepts to be assessed at JWA 19. It
will be manned by the Soldiers of 17th Fires Brigade and the assessment they
provide will inform Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley's upcoming
decision of whether to field Multi-Domain Task Forces for deployment around
the world.
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