BOLESŁAWIEC, Poland – The 4th Infantry Division built readiness through participation in a multi-domain, multi-corps, and multinational operations command post exercise, also known as M3 CPX, alongside Polish, Lithuanian, and Swedish military members June 5-13, 2023.
The exercise bolstered the readiness of the division and exhibited the scalability, flexibility and survivability of the mobile command post to NATO allies and partners, while simultaneously demonstrating the interoperability of each participating nation.
“Working through human interoperability was key,” Maj. Teodoro Garcia, a 4th Infantry Division plans officer, said about collaborating with other militaries.
“We are building the relationships that further enable us to develop procedural interoperability with our partners, and with V Corps,” Garcia continued. “We are also improving our technical interoperability, such as processing cross-border fire missions and counter-fire missions, which is a key focus area for the division.”
Throughout the exercise the combat operations intelligence center integrated a Lithuanian Land Forces officer into their shop. It was a smooth integration because they use similar procedures, doctrine, and the same military decision-making process, but the exercise still provided a great learning opportunity.
“You can learn from the best,” said Lithuanian Land Forces Capt. Svetlana Valters, an intelligence officer, “because there are the main chiefs who have a lot of experience and worked with higher units, so this experience will help me for the next exercise.”
Combining personnel and systems to build procedural and personal relationships between U.S. Army, Polish, Lithuanian, and Swedish land forces members did not come without challenges.
“I think the challenge is just understanding the communications architecture in the networks that must be configured and used in order to be able to send our digital transmissions back and forth,” said Maj. Bruce Archembault, a 4th Infantry Division joint air ground integration center chief.
The U.S. Army uses a specially designed communications system to pass digital information between various NATO countries, Archembault continued.
Garcia spoke to the benefits of working alongside NATO partners and allies.
“The ability to establish the (main command post) at (Bolesławiec) has allowed our partners and allies to come and see our processes,” he said, “And take what they feel is useful and practical for their own systems and their own processes and integrate them within their own structure.”
The M3 CPX is part of the Defender Europe exercise series, a U.S. European Command-directed multinational, joint exercise designed to build readiness and interoperability between U.S. and NATO allies and partners.
“The Defender Europe series of exercises was pretty historic this year as we had a multinational division as a command and control headquarters for the first time,” said Garcia. “The Spanish airborne division ‘Castillejos’ led the exercise off with U.S. command and control units.”
This command post exercise supports V Corps’ mission to increase higher headquarters readiness in NATO and reassure the commitment to partners and allies in the region.
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