As the Army transitions from a focus on Counter-Insurgency Operations to Large Scale Combat Operations, First Army Observer Coach/Trainers are tailoring their approach to meet this new need while maintaining close relationships with their Reserve Component partners.
Those partners include the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, which this summer worked alongside members of the 157th Brigade Combat Team to tackle an unprecedented challenge: Being an Army National Guard unit tasked to conduct a Combat Training Exercise (CTE), followed immediately by a mobilization exercise and deployment to theater, all from the same location. The Iowa Army National Guard unit will be supporting Inherent Resolve and its members worked with their 157th partners to ensure they are ready to accomplish this mission.
Until now, any Reserve Component unit preparing to deploy would conduct a CTE, then return to its home station before shipping to another location for mobilization and deployment.
Just one example of the challenges involved in the new approach is that, unlike their Active Duty counterparts, Reserve Component units move from one title authority to another.
“Until June 23, they’re on Title 32,” explained Capt. Luke Miller, an infantry team chief with the 157th Infantry Brigade. “We have to figure out what we can and can’t do ahead of time to get things ready to go. It limits some things that can be done until they become Title 10. That whole issue has caused some friction.”
While such challenges have arisen, 157 and 2-34 benefit from having worked together year-round.
“We’re here to help out where we can and smooth things out for them throughout this rotation as they get ready to go into the mobilization position,” Miller said.
By confronting the issues and working through solutions with 157, the 2-34 Red Bulls were prepared to become the first National Guard unit to execute a CTE and MOBEX back-to-back.
“It’s an Army experiment,” Miller said. “Fort Polk is not currently an MFGI, but it does mobilize Active Duty units routinely. The Army wants to see if we can mobilize a National Guard unit from Fort Polk. Usually when we bring them down for a JRTC rotation, they come down, they do their rotation, and then they ship back home, and they get one to four months before they show back up for their post-mob and deploy.”
This means coordinating with employers and dealing with multiple goodbyes to family members. “The Army is saying, ‘What if we made the whole process one month long and you show up for JRTC, flow right into post-mob training, and you go right into theatre?’ The core of this experiment is, can we flow from step to step to step, and send them off,” Miller explained.
The OC/Ts and the rest of the First Army team are helping to ease this process. “The role that we’ve been filling as boots on ground is a partnership role. We look at the situation and try to find those points of friction that we can put leaders and figure out how we can help,” Miller said. “The OC/Ts have been going out to see how they’re doing…and getting a sense of what we can help them to train on, and how can we smooth that out. We see how they are tracking things, where are the points of friction, and what are the things that we can do to help alleviate them.”
All this is being done under taxing and arduous conditions.
“JRTC prepares Soldiers for real-world combat by putting them in very realistic situations,” said Brig. Gen. Derek Adams, 34th Infantry Division assistant division commander for support, who served as senior trainer for JRTC rotation 25-08. “This is a very complex scenario but it’s also very real. The Army has transitioned from Counter Insurgency and Counter Terrorism training to training for Large Scale Combat Operations, and JRTC trains Large Scale Combat Operations at the Brigade Combat Team level.”
During the CTE, the 157th and 2-34th did repeated iterations at all times of day and in all conditions. That grueling, exacting work will pay off when the Red Bulls are called on to perform in theater.
Capt. Edward Quigley, a 157th Infantry Brigade OC/T, said that the CTE “ensures that the platoons whose day-to-day job downrange will be security force operations are ready to go on those core tasks. This exercise directly relates to what they will be doing downrange.”
Command Sgt. Maj. Evan Lewandowski, First Army Division East senior enlisted Soldier, added that, “This mobilization exercise allows the 2-34 junior leaders and NCOs, who don’t always train collectively, to build their teams, to understand their level of readiness, and increase their level of readiness.”
This all builds toward being able to leverage Large Scale Mobilization operations to support a large scale conflict .and ensure that Soldiers are ready to fight and win against near-peer adversaries. This necessitates large maneuvers, logistical coordination, and building and maintaining combat power and lethality. It includes challenges related to personnel, equipment, and sustainment, but Soldiers are being trained on and refining the skills necessary to accomplish this.
“My main goal for our Soldiers here is for us to accomplish a better resilience and more unit cohesion. These types of training environments are difficult and really test Soldiers’ toughness,” said 1st Sgt. Bryan Katz, senior enlisted Soldier for B Company, 1-133 Infantry. “They’re constantly being bombarded with either heat or rain and constant movement, and the mission keeps changing. They are being adaptable and flexible and learning how to continue to accomplish the mission while it changes while building that cohesion and learning to work together.”
1st Lt Austin Cox, HHC 334th Brigade Support Battalion personnel officer, added, “This is the most realistic training we can receive as an infantry brigade combat team. I feel more and more confident as the days go on that we’re prepared to do our mission.”
Helping to achieve that goal are 157th members, such as Capt. Francis Cutrone.
“Our focus is…ensuring that they don’t have any big red flags about personnel, equipment, HAZMAT, articles of war, those kinds of issues,” Cutrone said. “They are doing this JRTC rotation and are staying here and will transition from their post-mobilization from the exercise.”
Red Bull members have been professional, thorough, and attentive, according to Cutrone.
“They have been great to work with,” he said. “They are willing to take every piece of information that I can impart to them and they’ve been very clear in asking for assistance when they need it.”
Cutrone also has praise for the personnel running key operations at Fort Polk and the Joint Readiness Training Center: “JRTC and Fort Polk have a robust network to do railheads and everything else associated with deployment operations.”
Katz echoed those sentiments: “JRTC…offers unique opportunities to be tested in ways that other training environments can’t. Those opportunities allow for lessons learned that can carry over for any type of deployment, especially the one that’s upcoming.”
Those structures and advantages will be valuable if National Guard units begin routinely doing CTEs and MOBEXes back-to-back in support of LSCOs.
“This is a multi-line effort,” said Maj. Jay Patrick Griffith, 157th executive officer. “The first effort is the standard mobilization exercise and mobilization of a National Guard IBCT. The second line of effort is the FORSCOM rehearsal of concept for conducting a rehearsal of a Large Scale Mobilization Operation from a contingency MFGI. If we were asked, could First Army mobilize units from a location other than one they are partnered with?”
The longstanding partnerships between First Army brigades and Reserve Component units will aid in that question being answered affirmatively.
“Last year we conducted an XCTC and we were able to train with approximately 4,500 Soldiers,” Griffith said. “Most of those are the same ones that are executing this CTE. Of that, about half will deploy. OC/Ts across 157 touch every company, battery, troop, and above across 2-34 almost monthly. We have built that partnership and those relationships in order to mobilize this brigade.”
Also playing a key role are enterprise partners such as Installation Management Command and the deploying installations. “We are not as acclimated with the systems and processes at Fort Polk as we are with other places,” Griffith said. “But we have had amazing help from the Fort Polk installation team.”
With all the teammates coming together, the transition to LSCO is coming more into focus and the mission drives forward.
Bill Hampton, First Army G3/7 training director, praised the effort put forth by First Army and the Red Bulls, and noted that the successes have come from developing a clear focus and working diligently toward that end.
“First Army was tasked to conduct a proof of principle that would exercise a few of the Army’s objectives if and when needed for Large Scale Mobilization Operations,” he said. “They asked if we could use the MOBEX program, a National Guard BCT, and an inactive MFGI/Combat Training Center to rotate a unit though a normal cycle, but then transition them from Title 32 to Title 10, continue to train them, validate them, and turn them over to the Combatant Command trained and ready. In other words: A continuous mobilization from home station, to a training site, and into a theater of operation. The Red Bulls, like our military, will go off to do the mission they have trained to do. Our First Army OC/Ts worked side-by-side with our partner unit to ensure they are trained, ready, and will be successful.”
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