ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. — If the nation requires a large-scale mobilization of troops, First Army and its enterprise partners must be ready to deliver.

With that in mind, First Army has joined with nearly a dozen of those partners for Pershing Strike 23, a deliberate command post exercise, which began July 25 and runs through August 4. The event incorporates mobilization exercises conducted at mobilization force generation installations and involves more than 3,000 personnel at several installations including: Rock Island Arsenal; Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Stewart, Georgia; Camp Atterbury, Indiana; and Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.

Also participating are staff members from First Army Division East and First Army Division West, at Fort Knox, Kentucky and Fort Cavazos, Texas, respectively.

Bradley White, chief of the First Army Plans and Mobilization Division, said the exercise serves to “demonstrate First Army’s ability to provide the pre- and post-mobilization training and support that our Reserve component partners will require to successfully prepare for a deployment in support of a combatant commander.”

The process gives insight into the effort, coordination, and cooperation that would be required of First Army and its enterprise partners in event of a large-scale mobilization operation, or LSMO. Such operations are crucial to the nation’s defense, noted Col. Shawn Creamer, First Army director of operations.

“The Reserve component comprises 52 percent of the total Army and many of the key enabler capabilities resident within the Army — engineers, logistics units, military police, etc. — disproportionately reside within the Reserve Component,” he said. “The Army and the joint force rely on the Reserve component, our citizen Soldiers, to sustain our global operations and activities, and to advance U.S. national interests. Without the efficient and effective mobilization of a well-trained Reserve component, the Army cannot deliver land power when asked and the joint force cannot win when called.”

This statement speaks to the importance of holding the exercise. “We use training and exercises like Pershing Strike to both validate our current plans and test out new concepts,” Creamer said. “We press these plans and concepts to the breaking point, to see what works and what doesn’t. Out of this we can not only adjust our plans to correct identified shortfalls, but more importantly, articulate areas of risk to Army senior leaders.”

Being ready to fight is what the Army is all about, noted Rick Fink, First Army director of training and exercises. “LSMO is the reason there is an Army and Pershing Strike stresses our entire system,” he said.

During Pershing Strike 23, units and Soldiers are hit with an array of challenges they must respond to quickly and calmly. Injects, be they related to weather, personnel or logistics, force the participants to react and adapt.

It is a continually improving process, Fink said, adding that First Army and its enterprise partners have taken lessons learned from previous Pershing Strike exercises, refined them and applied them to today’s environment. That momentum will continue as input from this iteration will be applied going forward.

“We’ve seen what works and we see what changes we need to make and asked how can we do this better, more efficiently and quicker,” he said. “All the information we’re collecting, the purpose is to enable leaders to better understand what is happening on the ground. They are empowered with the best information to make the best decisions.”

Along those lines, White said key goals of Pershing Strike include establishing a shared understanding “of the sheer heavy lifting (required) by the entire mobilization enterprise to successfully execute LSMO” and identifying “critical gaps in the enterprises’ capability and capacity to support LSMO and work towards solutions.”

He added that Pershing Strike and its associated mobilization exercises also serve to increase readiness of the involved units: “By bringing together the critical mobilization enterprise partners and providing a representation of the workload and stress on the mobilization enterprise that would be experienced during a LSMO event, each unit, headquarters and the enterprise partners can flesh out their policies, processes and procedures required to execute mobilization operations.”

While most First Army personnel were doing their usual jobs during Pershing Strike, Col. Stew James stepped back from his role as senior advisor to the Army National Guard for Pennsylvania to serve as an observer coach/trainer during the exercise. He explained his responsibility in that capacity was to “observe processes and provide feedback. I take what they said they did well last year and make sure they’re still progressing. We want to expand our knowledge and not take a step back.”

That requires working toward a common goal. “It’s a team effort,” James said. “You have to crosspollinate that knowledge across the enterprise to make it efficient. By getting enterprise partners involved, we’re going to be better at knowing the problem sets that will appear if we have to do a large-scale mobilization. Every commander’s update brief and battle update brief, there is knowledge shared and that’s the benefit of this.”

It’s all geared toward First Army and its partners leaving the exercise better than when they started. “We should see growth,” James said. “Each iteration of Pershing Strike, we are gaining organizational knowledge and experience. Building that mobilization knowledge is critical so that we are solving new problems, not re-learning old problems.”

White emphasized the crucial role played by First Army’s enterprise partners, which include U.S. Army Forces Command, Installation Management Command, the Army National Guard, U.S. Army Reserve, U.S. Army Medical Command, U.S. Army North, U.S. Transportation Command, Army Sustainment Command, Army Materiel Command, U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command and Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command.

“Without the enterprise we will be unable to be successful at our mission of providing trained and validated (Reserve component) forces for the combatant commander,” he said. “Without the enterprise we can’t move our mobilizing units and their equipment to and through the [mobilization force generation installation] to the port. We can’t feed, billet or move our mobilizing units during post-mobilization training and without the enterprise support at our [mobilization force generation installations] our training brigades cannot execute their training and validation mission.”

While the exercise ends next week, the process will continue. Lessons learned will be taken back to respective installations, added to standard operating procedures, drilled on again and integrated into a system that will have First Army ready to deliver trained and ready troops if called upon.

By Warren W. Marlow

WASHINGTON — This weekend, the National Guard’s State Partnership Program marks 30 years of contacts, exercises and aid to nations around the world.

The SPP is a unique program that began in 1993. It paired state National Guard units with the newly independent nations of the former Soviet Union and nations emerging from the Warsaw Pact.

“The program that began in 1993 with just 13 countries and has now grown to 100 countries,” said Army Maj. Gen. William L. Zana, the Guard’s director of strategy, plans and international affairs. The general spoke about the program at the Pentagon today.

The importance of allies and partners is a cornerstone of U.S. strategy. “It is a theme that runs deeply through our national security strategy, national defense strategy, and national military strategy,” Zana said. “And I’d argue [it] is deeply encultured within what we do as the U.S. military, how we operate and our values.”

The SPP is based on working side-by-side with willing partners around the world. The National Guard Bureau administers the program in close consultation with Defense Department officials and the State Department. The aim is to build trust, confidence and capabilities with partner nations.

In the program’s early days, the emphasis was on helping nations throw off 47 years of Soviet domination. Many nations in that first class of partners are now proud members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The program soon punched above its weight and spread to U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Africa Command, and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. “The Guard is currently partnered with more than half of the world’s nations, and we expect to see continued growth in the coming years,” Zana said.

Combatant commanders universally praise the program. “[The SPP] is 1 percent of the nation’s security cooperation budget and results in 20 to 30 percent of the touch points or engagements that combatant commands have,” the general said. “So, they inherently see that value and the multipliers that go with that.”

These contacts are not limited to senior military and civilian officials, rather they stretch from privates and airmen up to generals. Guardsmen — unlike active-duty personnel – tend to stay in place, and many of the Guard’s noncommissioned officers and officers have “grown up” with their partners.

Zana, who has worked two of the last four years in Africa, said exercises are good training but often of short duration. “It’s not the same as having a relationship that has endured over many, many years where … families know one another, you’ve broken bread on both sides of an ocean,” he said. “You can’t build that trust overnight. I think it’s something that we, as the United States military, are particularly good — and our partners are really good — at.”

The partners have done more than simply exercise together. When U.S. National Guard units began deploying in harm’s way, the partners came with them. “The richness of those connections it can’t be… be overstated,” the general said. “It’s one of those things that made the program popular and built the enduring enthusiasm for it.”

National Guardsmen are Citizen-Soldiers who bring experiences and education from their civilian occupations to the process. “Often, some of the most creative activities and the things that happened with the program are an expansion beyond mil-to-mil or the creativity that goes with our Soldiers, Airmen and their counterparts from other countries,” he said. “That said, there are limitations with the funding of the program.”

The program calls for around $50 million, with additions coming from Congress. Zana would like to see all the money “on budget” to create a better planning horizon. “This year, we’ve got hundreds of events that we’ve either had to cancel or postpone,” he said. “And these are all events that are very much aligned with our national defense strategy and very much aligned with our partners and our combatant commands’ theater strategies.”

Ukraine was an early member of the program, partnering with the California National Guard in 1993. California Guardsmen helped train Ukrainian service members in NATO standards. They also trained them in using weapons like the Javelin and Stingers, which were so crucial in the early days of the Russian invasion of the country.

The California connection thrust the SPP into the news, and Americans got an idea of the depth and breadth of the military-to-military relationship. “In advance of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we were doing close partnerships, not just with the, with California and Ukraine,” Zana said. “One of the things we often refer to is ‘You marry one state, but you get the whole family with the Guard.’ So, when there’s a capability that doesn’t exist within the Army Guard or Air Guard within a state, we reach across the 54 states, territories and the District of Columbia to be able to get additional resources or capability.”

One aspect that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves is the way Ukraine has adopted the U.S. emphasis on unit and tactical-level leadership, driven by noncommissioned officers. “If you look at the small unit, tactics and success within Ukraine, I think part of that is attributed back to much of the work that was done between Ukraine, California and other partners in the region,” he said.

The 30th anniversary will be marked at National Harbor in Maryland on July 17-18. Partner officials will join National Guardsmen, DOD officials, State Department officials and ambassadors to mark the event. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will be the keynote speaker on July 17.

By Jim Garamone, DOD News

Additional Info:

State Partnership Program Celebrates 30 Years

State Partnership Program 30th Anniversary media roundtable 

Major General William Zana Briefing on 30th SPP Anniversary

30th Anniversary of the State Partnership Program

State Partnership Program turns 30

A Five-Part Series By Master Sgt. Jim Greenhill and Sgt. 1st Class Zach Sheely, National Guard Bureau

‘Why Don’t we do a Little Partnership Thing?’ The Department of Defense National Guard State Partnership Program is Born

‘Our Real Superpower as a Nation is our Allies and Partners’ The Department of Defense National Guard State Partnership Program Today

‘A Mosaic of Opportunities’ The Department of Defense National Guard State Partnership Program Looks to the Future

‘It truly is a Team Sport’ How the Department of Defense National Guard State Partnership Program Works

‘The Most Important People in the Army are the Sergeants’ The Department of Defense National Guard State Partnership Program: A Crucial Arrow in Ukraine’s Quiver

CAMP GUERNSEY, Wyo. – Iowa National Guard infantry and aviation units traveled west by ground convoy and air to conduct annual training at the Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center in Wyoming at the end of May.

Wyoming’s elevation and expansive landscape offered a different training environment for the Midwest Soldiers.

“We’re spoiled in Iowa,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ryan Hill, a training officer and UH-60 Black Hawk pilot with Company C, 2nd Battalion, 147th Assault Helicopter Battalion. The state sits about 1,100 feet above sea level. “We have power for days. Whereas [in Wyoming], you’re starting at about 5,000 feet, which is going to change aircraft performance. That’ll be good training for aircrew members when they go to high altitude.”

Several aircraft crew chiefs qualified on door gunnery skills, shooting an M240 machine gun out of the window of a Black Hawk as it flew over targets.

“My favorite part was definitely going up high and then seeing the tracers hit the little buildings and all the humvees,” said Spc. Julia Adkins, a Black Hawk mechanic with the 2-147th AHB. “It was a great experience because I’m brand new to flying.”

The 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment (“Lethal Battalion”), took advantage of the expansive weapon qualification ranges and rugged terrain to practice squad-level maneuvers. Soldiers spent several days in tents in the field.

“It’s just a massive training area,” said Capt. Jeremy White, executive officer with the 1-168th Infantry. “You can drive it for hours one side to the other. If you think you can put all your gear on and run around conducting operations like normal, you’re wrong. You can’t dodge higher elevation and this is a completely different terrain.”

White described it as collective training to test how well Soldiers move as a team toward objectives using communication and hand signals. Companies took turns rotating through physically taxing live-fire exercises, moving swiftly up and down steep slopes through tall grass and dodging environmental obstacles.

“We grow as a team as we’re out there,” said Spc. Valery Gonzalez, with the 1-168th Infantry. “We obviously have to trust each other so nobody gets hurt.”

In addition to completing unit-level tasks, the two infantry and aviation elements joined together to conduct realistic operational training. Ground force commanders with the 1-168th Infantry sent up orders to the 2-147th AHB, imitating what would happen if infantry Soldiers needed aircraft assistance in a real-world scenario – whether they needed people, supplies or equipment transported.

“One of the big takeaways for us is that we’re a customer-based service,” said Hill. “We have a lot of young aviators who have been focused on getting good at flying the aircraft. Now, they’re going to be able to execute planning processes, and they’ll have passengers that need things with real-life factors playing into it.”

The training is also valuable for Soldiers in the 1-168th Infantry. White said many Soldiers in the Iowa Guard train with real aircraft only a few times in their careers. The 2-147th AHB offered familiarization with aircraft safety procedures, air assault movements, supply drops and sling load operations.

The 1-168th Infantry trained on their new M3A1 Carl Gustaf Multi-roll, Anti-Armor, Anti-Personnel Weapons System (MAAWS). The recoilless rifle is capable of firing numerous types of rounds suited for targets that range from humvees to armored tanks. It can also illuminate the battlefield and provide smokescreens.

Staff Sgt. Chris Nieman, an infantryman assigned to Company A, said the weapon’s improved optics system eliminates much of the guesswork in aiming at targets.

“I really enjoy being in the field and training Soldiers,” said Nieman. “It’s loud, it blows up. Soldiers enjoy that. On a tactical level, it just increases our lethality. It’s a force multiplier on its own.”

Members of the 1-168th Infantry also broke in some new M110 A1 squad-designated marksman rifles with scopes, ambidextrous controls and suppressors. Even with all the new features, it wasn’t much heavier than the traditional M4 carbine rifle most Army Soldiers use.

“It’s a dream to shoot,” said Staff Sgt. Gabriel Morey, an infantryman with Company C. “I’ve seen nothing but smiles coming off of our range here at Camp Guernsey, so we have pretty positive rave reviews so far.”

By SSG Tawny Kruse, Joint Force Headquarters – Iowa National Guard

The 75th Innovation Command (IC), based in Houston, Texas, employs reservist Soldiers who have been recruited from the civilian world because of their sought-after technical skills and expertise.

The 75th IC team also bring decades of combined military experience with countless deployments under their belts.

“We are here because we are engineers, we are scientists, we all have STEM degrees and backgrounds, so it’s easy for us to talk the talk with these developers and innovators,” explained Chief Warrant Officer 3 Steven Dixon, an innovation technician with the 75th IC.

“I can see where these technologies could be applied on the battlefield, because we have been there. All of us,” added Dixon, who has been deployed six times.

Lt. Col. Martin Plumlee, officer in charge for 75th IC from the Huntsville Innovation Detachment said, “That’s sort of the beauty and secret sauce of the 75th. We are looking for those people who have those unique skills and abilities who can help the Army when they are wearing this suit [Army uniform] and still help the Army when they are wearing a different suit.”

So, who better to provide Soldier feedback during the aviation-centric Experimentation Demonstration Gateway Event, better known as EDGE, that took place at Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) in late April through mid-May than the 75th IC?

The three-week event brought Army Futures Command’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) Cross-Functional Team and industry and international partners to the Yuma desert to work through network connectivity, frequency communication and flying maneuvers. The event culminated with a live capabilities demonstration for senior leaders and members of Congress.

“Our job here is to integrate and to be embedded with FVL to support all levels of their mission,” Plumlee explained.

That meant boots on the ground at YPG for the duration of the exercise to assess the technology and provide feedback. The 75th IC Soldier feedback in some instances provided the missing link to get a system just right.

Capt. Eric McClure, an Innovation Officer with the 75th and UH-60 Blackhawk pilot by trade, said there were several moments with technology creators where the collaboration led them to think, “Oh, I never really thought about this” or “The feedback you just provided will help us go back and fix a software error or bug we saw, or potentially help improve a system to make it more user friendly.”

EDGE provided the unique ability to gather creators, engineers and software developers with Soldiers for their instant assessment and recommendations.

“Failure is a gift” is a term McClure said someone coined during EDGE. He went on to explain, “It’s a great learning moment, so they can take that back and improve their system. You can see there is care in the eyes of these industry partners to fix those problems, and some have been doing that rapidly on the fly. They have their engineers and their software coders on site. They experience a problem one day, they immediately go back and try to fix it.”

EDGE’s location in the hot Arizona desert made for a perfect training ground. Yuma Test Center at YPG provides unrestricted airspace to allow for air and ground testing.

“You can design something, but if you don’t know how it’s integrated, if the person who is putting in the equipment, or the crew members landing, don’t interact on true missions, or mock missions where they are actually flying the aircraft in the dust with sweaty hands using the equipment, it makes a huge difference,” explained Chief Warrant Officer 4 Gerrit Jenniskens, a tech scout with the 75th IC.

“You see where the failure points are here in a test experimental environment. So, when they get out in the desert or mountain or wherever they are going to be operational, those variable points are reduced. Let’s get it right in the experimental phase,” Jenniskens added.

And that’s ultimately the goal of EDGE — looking to see if the presented systems will be effective solutions and useful for the Army of the future.

“We want to win and bring all our men and women home,” remarked Plumlee.

By Ana Henderson

CAMP MAGSAYSAY, Philippines — As one of Army Futures Command’s first forays into in-theater persistent experimentation, a team of observers/assessors were in the Philippines looking at the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force’s capabilities in the Pacific.

This Joint Warfighting Assessment, or JWA, team observed the 1st MDTF’s concepts and capabilities during Balikatan 23, a Marine-led exercise. The JWA23 team is led by the U.S. Army Joint Modernization Command and includes experts from various capability development integration divisions. The assessment is meant to build on the lessons learned during past Joint Warfighting Assessments and Project Convergence capstone events. With persistent experimentation, regular assessments like this throughout each year will allow Army modernization and transformation efforts to maintain momentum and speed.

Brig. Gen. Bernard Harrington, commander of the 1st MDTF, underscored the significance of initiatives like JWA23 in shaping the future of the Army in the Indo-Pacific.

“JWA23 is an opportunity to get multiple teams together to figure out how we get the Joint force into position in the Indo-Pacific” Harrington said. “Over the last two years, [U.S. Army Pacific] has steadily increased investments in the first island chain, placing combat-credible forces on key terrain to build interoperability with key partners. JWA23 is one feedback mechanism to evaluate how we prevent conflict and prevail in competition.”

The MDTF is the newest formation in the Army and is at the forefront of Army experimentation. Many of the new capabilities the Army is looking to in the future would come from the MDTF. During JWA 23, the JMC-led team assessed the 1st MDTF’s ability to integrate with joint partners and allies, joint sensor-to-shooter efforts, joint networking and joint force protection. As part of preparing for future conflict, the MDTF is being asked to do things the Army has never done before.

Balikatan is the largest annual bilateral exercise conducted between the Philippines and the United States. This year’s exercise, which took place in late April, was the largest to date, with more than 17,600 participants. Balikatan advances combined military modernization and capability development efforts by providing realistic rehearsals of concept, as well as numerous subject matter expertise exchanges.

From the beginning, the build of the MDTF was designed to be a joint force enabler. Looking specifically at the Pacific, adversaries have spent the past 20 years designing a network to keep out the Army’s joint force partners, focusing on high-flying aircraft and large maritime vessels, said Lt. Col. Ben Blane of the 1st MDTF.

“When we talk about the Balikatan exercise, we do have this relationship with the partners here in the Philippines,” Blane said. “But we’re also bringing in our partners from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marines. We’re connected with our partners afloat in the Pacific and also in our main operations center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord who are helping us with some of these concepts. It’s that partnership, and then together, really building those capabilities forward in the Pacific. So, if we do rise to the point of conflict, we have some survivable positions here that can support the joint force.”

The Joint Modernization Command and its Joint Warfighting Assessments have been important to the MDTF’s experimentation and development from the start, Blane said. And as part of AFC’s persistent experimentation efforts, JWAs continue to be an integral part of developing the right capabilities with the right people for the future of competition and warfare.

“To take you all the way back to JWA19, the assessors saw the value in filling some of these gaps that we were talking about,” he said. “There was a quote in the final document that said the Army needs to immediately prioritize this formation and get into both PACOM and EUCOM as fast as possible. You saw the activation of the MDTF soon after.

“Bringing in this team here during JWA23, we refine these ideas, talk about these concepts, talk about the things we’re learning, and then get it through that other lens where we’re bringing in experts with the JMC team and all of the Army Modernization Enterprise,” Blane said. “We’re really honing in on what we’re doing here, why it’s important and then taking that refined message and then being able to push that back out to the rest of the force. That’s huge. And I’ll tell you what, the Soldiers are super excited about what they’re doing.”

MDTF experimentation is critical to getting the formations and capabilities of future warfare correct. Joint and Combined multidomain operations are key to the future, and the MDTF is at the cutting edge of that concept.

By Jonathan Koester