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From: US News
FORT IRWIN, California – As part of his exit tour after leading the U.S. Army for the past four years, Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno recently oversaw a major training exercise in mock battle that hasn't been conducted at this scale in over a decade. With many senior Pentagon officials looking on, Odierno was demonstrating the Army's enduring role in providing conventional deterrence, a capability often associated with the Navy and Air Force as the services that visibly and frequently project U.S. power around the globe.
The impressive display of combat power and cutting-edge training by some of the Army's most elite forces was a fitting way to hand over the baton to the next chief, who will surely confront these types of hybrid and high-end challenges for which the exercise was designed to prepare.
Against the setting red sun over the skies of the Mojave Desert last week, America's Army, with copious amounts of close air support from its friends in the Air Force, carried out Operation Dragon Spear. This was a massive combined-arms training exercise that simulated conventional Army units and Special Forces conducting a forcible entry into enemy territory. Military leaders were clear about the purpose of the live-fire event, with the flawless execution and precision fireworks intended for audiences in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work told the gathering near dawn the next day, deterrence is most effective when it is ably demonstrated.
There was no doubt the U.S. Army accomplished just that. Dragon Spear loudly signaled the Army's return as a deterrent force, one designed to get inside a potential future enemy's calculations and dissuade them from acting.
Policymakers too often simplify effective deterrence into a simple equation: political will plus military capability. While American allies often doubt the political will of the Obama administration, Operation Dragon Spear was designed to leave no doubt in our adversaries' mind that the United States military retains the capability to rapidly re-take defended territory by force. Forcible entry – think D-Day or the landing at Inchon in the Korean War – establishes a beachhead for follow-on American troops.
Since the U.S. military has fewer forces based forward than at any time since the end of the Cold War, the capability to conduct combined-arms and multi-service forcible entry operations is a linchpin of American global power projection. If the Pentagon cannot accomplish forcible entry, the majority of the U.S.-based military would be rendered useless in scenarios such as a North Korean invasion of South Korea or a Russian thrust against the Baltics.
The exercise brought out some of the military's best assets: M1A1 Abrams tanks with heavy machine guns and main guns blazing, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters firing salvos of rockets, and HIMARS, the Army's long-range guided rocket system. After the sun set, Air Force F-15Es and one F-35 paved the way with precision-guided 500-pound bombs, the 75th Ranger Regiment dropped out of CV-22 Ospreys to secure the area, and Army Airborne soldiers parachuted in droves from C-130J and C-17 cargo planes.
In addition to its utility as a signaling mechanism, the large-scale exercise was equally significant for the American forces involved, who have not received this type of high-level training in sufficient numbers in years. When Odierno testified in January that only 23 of 66 Brigade Combat Teams would receive "[training] in their core mission capabilities in Decisive Action and Unified Land Operations," he was talking about the land-based portion of Operation Dragon Spear.
Though the Army does not regularly hold exercises that include air-based capabilities, it wants to give all 66 Brigade Combat Teamss brigade-level training at Fort Irwin's National Training Center. Bigger than the size of Rhode Island, this land is the only type in the nation that can host this level of complex exercises at this scale. As Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, commanding general of the 18th Airborne Corps, said, the Army's training centers afford the "Super Bowl of combat training."
Unfortunately, this year most Army units will only get squad-level training, not even company-level or battalion-level maneuvers. In the successful aftermath of Operation Dragon Spear, Pentagon officials simply must find a way to ensure the Army gets all of its brigades cycled through. The threats these exercises are designed to confront will not wait for politics to change, and neither should the U.S. Army.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2015/08/12/operation-dragon-spear-shows-us-army-is-a-deterrence-force
FORT IRWIN, California – As part of his exit tour after leading the U.S. Army for the past four years, Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno recently oversaw a major training exercise in mock battle that hasn't been conducted at this scale in over a decade. With many senior Pentagon officials looking on, Odierno was demonstrating the Army's enduring role in providing conventional deterrence, a capability often associated with the Navy and Air Force as the services that visibly and frequently project U.S. power around the globe.
The impressive display of combat power and cutting-edge training by some of the Army's most elite forces was a fitting way to hand over the baton to the next chief, who will surely confront these types of hybrid and high-end challenges for which the exercise was designed to prepare.
Against the setting red sun over the skies of the Mojave Desert last week, America's Army, with copious amounts of close air support from its friends in the Air Force, carried out Operation Dragon Spear. This was a massive combined-arms training exercise that simulated conventional Army units and Special Forces conducting a forcible entry into enemy territory. Military leaders were clear about the purpose of the live-fire event, with the flawless execution and precision fireworks intended for audiences in Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work told the gathering near dawn the next day, deterrence is most effective when it is ably demonstrated.
There was no doubt the U.S. Army accomplished just that. Dragon Spear loudly signaled the Army's return as a deterrent force, one designed to get inside a potential future enemy's calculations and dissuade them from acting.
Policymakers too often simplify effective deterrence into a simple equation: political will plus military capability. While American allies often doubt the political will of the Obama administration, Operation Dragon Spear was designed to leave no doubt in our adversaries' mind that the United States military retains the capability to rapidly re-take defended territory by force. Forcible entry – think D-Day or the landing at Inchon in the Korean War – establishes a beachhead for follow-on American troops.
Since the U.S. military has fewer forces based forward than at any time since the end of the Cold War, the capability to conduct combined-arms and multi-service forcible entry operations is a linchpin of American global power projection. If the Pentagon cannot accomplish forcible entry, the majority of the U.S.-based military would be rendered useless in scenarios such as a North Korean invasion of South Korea or a Russian thrust against the Baltics.
The exercise brought out some of the military's best assets: M1A1 Abrams tanks with heavy machine guns and main guns blazing, AH-64 Apache attack helicopters firing salvos of rockets, and HIMARS, the Army's long-range guided rocket system. After the sun set, Air Force F-15Es and one F-35 paved the way with precision-guided 500-pound bombs, the 75th Ranger Regiment dropped out of CV-22 Ospreys to secure the area, and Army Airborne soldiers parachuted in droves from C-130J and C-17 cargo planes.
In addition to its utility as a signaling mechanism, the large-scale exercise was equally significant for the American forces involved, who have not received this type of high-level training in sufficient numbers in years. When Odierno testified in January that only 23 of 66 Brigade Combat Teams would receive "[training] in their core mission capabilities in Decisive Action and Unified Land Operations," he was talking about the land-based portion of Operation Dragon Spear.
Though the Army does not regularly hold exercises that include air-based capabilities, it wants to give all 66 Brigade Combat Teamss brigade-level training at Fort Irwin's National Training Center. Bigger than the size of Rhode Island, this land is the only type in the nation that can host this level of complex exercises at this scale. As Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, commanding general of the 18th Airborne Corps, said, the Army's training centers afford the "Super Bowl of combat training."
Unfortunately, this year most Army units will only get squad-level training, not even company-level or battalion-level maneuvers. In the successful aftermath of Operation Dragon Spear, Pentagon officials simply must find a way to ensure the Army gets all of its brigades cycled through. The threats these exercises are designed to confront will not wait for politics to change, and neither should the U.S. Army.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2015/08/12/operation-dragon-spear-shows-us-army-is-a-deterrence-force
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