![]() ![]() He said the training helps prepare the headquarters for the future, by highlighting strengths and capabilities and improving relationships with partner forces. “For us, it’s critically important,” Walker said. And a great opportunity to improve working relationships between conventional and foreign forces that would operate side-by-side in a combat environment. Josh Walker, chief of staff for the 1st Special Forces Command, said the warfighter exercise was a first for the command. Joint Expeditionary Force and the only division in the British Army tasked with being ready to deploy at all times.Ĭol. Division is the core land element of the U.K. If deployed, 1st Special Forces Command would oversee special operations forces not only from the Army – Special Forces, Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations, among others – but also troops from Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy special operations units.Īnd the 3rd U.K. Like the 18th Airborne Corps, the 1st Special Forces Command and 3rd U.K. Officials did not discuss the particulars of the training, which was at least partly based on real-world environments. That could include solving logistical challenges, combating cyber threats, integrating fires or linking ground forces to air or naval power. Through simulated battlefields, Brunson said the exercise tests soldiers’ ability to respond to tactical, operational and strategic problems. “It highlights what’s expected of us,” he said. “It’s not like riding a bicycle.”īrunson said the training was meant to test the ability of the nation’s contingency corps to deploy quickly in response to a threat somewhere in the world and then manage a complex battlefield. Division.Ĭrissman said officials hoped to make participation in an American warfighter exercise an annual event and have already committed to a similar training exercise next year at Fort Hood, Texas. ![]() Douglas Crissman, an American general who serves as deputy commanding general of the 3rd U.K. The training was more than two years in the making, according to Brig. “That complexity demands a lot more practice.”īorton led approximately 1,100 British soldiers to Fort Bragg for the exercise. “This is really a steep change,” he said Tuesday, from a small outpost of tents, camouflage netting and razor wire built near Holland Drop Zone on Fort Bragg. Division, said the exercise more closely resembled the fighting of World War II than it does past operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. Borton, commanding general of the 3rd U.K. “For the past 16 years, we’ve fought alongside these people, day after day.”īut while those operations have been largely focused on fighting insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ongoing warfighter exercise is replicating a larger, more complex fight against an advanced enemy involving conventional and irregular forces, with troops deployed to a foreign nation amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis.īritish Maj. “This is how it is in combat,” Brunson said. Xavier Brunson, the 18th Airborne Corps chief of staff. In doing so, the training more closely resembles how the Army would fight in a real-world battle, said Brig. ![]() ![]() The training fully integrates both special operations forces through a Special Operations Joint Task Force, or SOJTF, and a British division working under the 18th Airborne Corps. But officials said this iteration – which takes place mostly at Fort Bragg but also involves troops at Hurlburt Field, Florida Fort Leavenworth, Kansas and Fort Carson, Colorado – is the first of its kind. Army, often used to validate the training of a division or corps command. Warfighting exercises are common across the U.S. Division have deployed to training areas to simulate austere environments at or near the front lines of a massive conflict against a near-peer threat. Headquarters of the 18th Airborne Corps, 1st Special Forces Command, 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, 4th Infantry Division and the British Army’s 3rd U.K. The warfighting exercise currently underway – the training is set to end Wednesday – involves conventional, special operations and foreign forces operating in a largely virtual environment. For the past several weeks, thousands of troops have been waging an invisible war centered around Fort Bragg. ![]()
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