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Archive for the ‘Guest Post’ Category
MATBOCK Monday: How a SOIDC Loads His Graverobber Assault Medic
Monday, April 8th, 2024Hometown Army Fellow Joins PEO Soldier as Next Gen Body Armor Engineer
Monday, April 8th, 2024
Born and raised in Alexandria, Va., Britt Wieland grew up going to the Ft. Belvoir summer camp.
Now, as a civilian engineer with PEO Soldier, she works on the Army’s next generation body armor at Fort Belvoir.
Wieland’s primary focus as a Body Armor Engineer is the Army’s new hard armor. In her current position, she enjoys seeing the direct impact of her work on the warfighter every day.
“We procure and field the latest body armor to our Soldiers,” explained Wieland.
“I have some friends serving in the Army, and every time they receive the newest gear, they call me to rant and rave about how excited they are, and I take a sense of pride in knowing I get to play a part in serving those who serve us. There aren’t many jobs that give you that kind of opportunity and fulfillment.”
Having trained as both a Hard and Soft Armor Engineer, Britt frequently is called upon to brief Soldiers, Army Senior Leaders, and industry partners on the Vital Torso Protection (VTP) system.
VTP is a subsystem of the Soldier Protection System, the Army’s newest Personal Protective Equipment. The Army is currently collecting data to verify trade space of weight reduction with protection ability for Soldiers to reduce the Soldier’s load and increase mobility in tactical environments.
“Our goal is to rebalance the testing to optimize the time and cost spent, while maintaining performance. This will allow industry to redirect resources towards developing more advanced designs and technologies, which in turn, benefits the Soldier.”
As the chair for the Vital Torso Protection Purchase Description project, Wieland has had an opportunity to work on the Army’s newest hard armor, where she has demonstrated her leadership skills during the process of changing the testing and evaluations for VTP.
“We’re looking to make the test procedures more statistically significant, operationally relevant, and aligned with the original requirements,” explains Wieland.
“I feel really special knowing my leadership trusted me to represent them even though I was less than a year into my career.”
Britt has served in key briefing roles to the special operations community, including the Spear Side-by-Side, which aimed to develop understanding and communality amongst the kit used in SOF versus the general Army, and USASOC Women in ARSOF, which supports holistic improvements to not only the kit of female Soldiers, but also improvements to uniforms, healthcare and quality of life.
“Britt has been able to brief key senior leaders and a large group of female Sergeants Major from ARSTAFF on improvements to PPE and paths forward for iterative changes based on Soldier feedback. She’s also taken part in HFEs to gain knowledge on Soldier kit,” said Maj. Kim Pierre-Zamora, the assistant product manager for the body armor team.
“There’s also a special place in my heart for the Army’s mission to better equip female and small statured soldiers,” Britt Wieland said.
“As a smaller female myself, I take pride in being a female engineer that gets to help take on this task and find it extremely rewarding every time I get to fit a female Warrior with a new kit that was made with them in mind,” Wieland said.
Britt Wieland graduated Summa Cum Laude from Lawrence Technological University in 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering. She became an Army Fellow in 2020 and joined PEO Soldier as a Department of the Army civilian in 2023.
By Scott Sundsvold, Army
Welding Individual Protective Safety Ensemble
Sunday, April 7th, 2024
Last month, members of Product Manager Soldier Clothing and Individual Equipment (PdM SCIE) issued the Welding Individual Protective Safety Ensemble to Soldiers at Fort Eustis, Virginia is. The ensemble provides Soldiers with personal protective equipment to perform most welding duties in any operational environment. The equipment went into Limited User Testing and Evaluation with Allied Trade Specialists, focusing on Soldier ease of movement and functionality. Early testing included welding tasks while wearing body armor.
Rapid Raven 24-1: Posturing EMS Warfighters for Combat
Sunday, April 7th, 2024
EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. —
In order to establish readiness and further operationalize the wing, the 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing went into a warfighting posture during Rapid Raven 24-1, its first internal exercise designed to test its ability to wage war in the Electromagnetic Spectrum and meet combat requirements and timelines.
“The Air Force can’t succeed in war if our wing can’t execute its mission essential tasks at the speed of relevance,” said U.S. Air Force Col. Josh Koslov, 350th SWW commander. “Rapid Raven wasn’t just an exercise; it was a chance to attack our mission essential tasks as a whole and see what works and what doesn’t.”
During Rapid Raven, the wing challenged its members’ ability to sense and respond to changes in the EMS and rapidly reprogram mission data files (MDF) in a wartime environment, focusing on command-and-control elements.
“In order for us to beat China, we have to be able to do our job in less than three hours,” said Koslov. “It’s an easy thing to say but a harder thing to do. When you start peeling back three hours, what does that actually mean? We addressed that question this week.”
The results from this exercise will inform future tactics, techniques, and procedures in the wing, increasing the speed at which the Air Force can assert spectrum dominance and inform the requirements the wing needs. The exercise also identified requirements needed by the wing to execute its mission at the pace of battle.
“Rapid Raven was able to identify opportunities to go even faster in the future,” said Dylan Duplechain, 350th SWW chief engineer. “With modern, hardened communication pathways to receive and push data, as well as AI/ML [artificial intelligence/machine learning] tools to assist with decision-making, we can further improve warfighting lethality within our current portfolio.”
The exercise simulated 24-hour operations, beginning with the wing receiving an emergency operational change request for updated MDFs based on a new complex emitter, triggering the Electronic Warfare Integrated Reprogramming (EWIR) cycle across squadrons.
“We purposely chose threats in multiple bands [frequency range] that should affect most of the systems, requiring reprogramming,” said U.S. Air Force Maj. Joseph Ellis, 350th SWW A3 operations director. “It’s about stressing the wing in a combat-representative environment to the point where we’ll learn a lot about our skills to get better and faster.”
Reprogramming, or updating, MDFs is crucial in times of conflict to provide warfighters with data about the electronic landscape, to include latest threat intelligence, that allows aircraft, aircrew, and commanders to sense, identify, locate, and counter threats in the EMS.
Conducting rapid reprogramming of MDFs is paramount to combat the wartime reserve modes for systems and platforms used during conflict or emergencies, a point stressed by U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, during his nomination hearing in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee last September.
“In a high-end fight, warfighters require Spectrum dependent systems to win,” said Allvin. “These systems will operate on frequency bands across the entire Spectrum and are critical in a peer-contested environment. We expect our adversaries to attack across the Spectrum and we must be ready and responsive to that, by training and fighting in all parts of it.”
Throughout the exercise, all members captured data detailing timelines, effective aspects of procedures, and areas that impacted the speed of reprogramming for teams.
The feedback collected from across the wing will drive impactful change, increasing the pace of reprogramming operations and laying out the parameters necessary for the wing to effectively generate combat power through data to the warfighter.
“Data is our weapon and key to defeating any adversary and that’s what Rapid Raven focused on,” said Koslov. “The ability to receive, manipulate and turn that data into a combat capability that the warfighter can take into battle at the speed of relevance is what will allow us to win.”
The wing plans to expand the Rapid Raven exercise and ramp up the intensity and scope for future iterations as it continuously tests its ability to provide EMSO capabilities at a moment’s notice and meet the growing demand for Spectrum capabilities.
“We came to the wing about a year and a half ago and we talked about operationalizing the war fighting mission and war fighting culture,” said Koslov. “It took us a year and a half to build up to what we did this week, and it was awesome. Our Crows really embraced the warfighting culture that we need to beat our adversaries and China.”
At the conclusion of the exercise, the wing came together for an awards ceremony to recognize top performers who embraced the warfighting culture and led the way for reprogramming efforts.
The winners were:
Rapidest Ravens – 68th Electronic Warfare Squadron AV Shop
MVP – 39th Electronic Warfare Squadron EW Help Desk
Perseverance Award – 453d Electronic Warfare Squadron Threat Change Detection Team
By Capt Benjamin Aronson, 350th Spectrum Warfare Wing Public Affairs
The Solution Sandstorm: 75th Innovation Command Crystallizes Partnerships During PC-C4
Saturday, April 6th, 2024FORT IRWIN, Calif. — A dark, empty conference room at Fort Irwin’s National Training Center suddenly illuminates as Brig. Gen. John Stanley, deputy commanding general, 75th U.S. Army Reserve Innovation Command, enters and calls on all Soldiers wearing the 75th patch to huddle around him and his command staff.
“Project Convergence is our culminating event,” Stanley said to the handpicked Soldiers for this cutting-edge exercise. “You are the connective tissue between the Army and its DOD partners … You will add value to the Army’s Transformation Enterprise by identifying practical solutions to novel ideas that will codify future military doctrine.”
The nods from the warfighters gathered in the drab workspace silently affirmed that they were already putting Stanley’s words into practice.
In early March, approximately 40 Soldiers from the 75th USARIC joined forces with various Army commands and defense contractors in the deserts of Fort Irwin to assess and enhance emerging technologies during Project Convergence Capstone 4. This U.S. Army-hosted experiment encouraged service members from all U.S. military branches and allied nations to forge the future of warfare from the tactical to the strategic level.
“PC-C4 thrusts frontier technology into realistic scenarios that the Army might face against ever-evolving adversaries,” said Stanley, who was recently promoted in February. “The 75th USARIC helps our partners refine their systems and equipment by applying our military experience and civilian expertise.”
The 75th USARIC stands out among other Army Reserve commands through its unique mission set that demands highly skilled Soldiers who are leaders in their area of expertise. As part of the Army’s Transformation Enterprise, the 75th USARIC provides specialized capabilities to solve the Army’s toughest problems. Its ranks comprise seasoned professionals specializing in robotics, biotechnology, project management, cyber security, machine learning, and other advanced fields. Divided into two groups and 16 detachments, this two-star command has approximately 500 Soldiers, with many currently working for Fortune 500 companies at the management or executive level. Some are founders of their own tech start-up firms. About one out of five Soldiers in the 75th USARIC has a doctorate, with many more holding master’s degrees and IT certifications.
“Members of the 75th readily translate complex discussions among scientists, engineers and Soldiers on the ground,” said Lt. Col. Andrew Miller, innovation officer with Support Group, 75th USARIC. “We assess network issues and technical challenges in the design phase, then integrate solutions to help teams better perform in the execution phase.”
In his civilian capacity, Miller has served as a project manager at one of the world’s leading companies in software, hardware and cloud services. His corporate background helped secure a leading role in 75th’s partnership with the Army Research Laboratory’s Deep Autonomous Reconnaissance & Targeting Sensing program. DARTS integrates sensing and automation technology to produce accurate target information. Miller and several 75th USARIC Soldiers collaborated alongside the DARTS development team throughout PC-C4 to see firsthand how the system would perform in a simulated, battlefield scenario.
“Having the 75th at PC-C4 to support this program is incredibly beneficial,” said Jeffrey Houser, lead research scientist DARTS. “Army Research Laboratory has many scientists and engineers who are very good at creating cutting-edge technology for our troops. However, we sometimes struggle with communicating to our end users how to take full advantage of these advanced systems. The 75th Soldiers here not only speak the language of those in Army operations, but they also ask questions and make recommendations that my team wouldn’t have otherwise considered.”
These inquisitive innovators expanded their services to Future Vertical Lift, a key priority in the Army Transformational Enterprise. The FVL Cross Functional Team aims to modernize Army aviation by improving speed, range and coordination to take decisive action in various operational environments. Programs that fall under FVL-CFT’s scope include advanced rotorcraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and even autonomous helicopters.
A pair of 75th USARIC Soldiers from the Command’s Huntsville detachment proactively inserted themselves with the design team for the K1000ULE, an ultra-long endurance unmanned aerial system led by Kraus Hamdani Aerospace.
“The first and maybe most important step we took during Project Convergence was to develop close relationships through face-to-face conversations,” said 1st Lt. Omega Marks, innovation officer, 75th USARIC. “By joining these technical discussions, we gained a deeper understanding of the [K1000ULE] contributions to Future Vertical Lift, and we proved to the [Kraus Hamdani] Aerospace team that the 75th can enhance the K1000ULE’s capabilities by identifying potential issues and offering viable solutions.”
Marks, who also serves as a cyber security assessor for a company contracted by the U.S. State Department, joined her enlisted counterpart, Staff Sgt. Christopher Wright, noncommissioned officer-in-charge, Huntsville Detachment, 75th USARIC, to help enhance the K1000ULE’s capabilities.
“Many of the 11 distinct types of technology we saw [at PC-C4] greatly benefited from a thorough analysis of potential cyber threats,” said Wright, who works as a senior security engineer for a Fortune 100 company. Our inclusion in matters of surveillance, networking and electronic countermeasures addressed issues that could compromise performance or, worse, enable our adversaries to exploit our technology against us.”
While most 75th USARIC Soldiers at Fort Irwin stormed PC-C4 with innovative solutions at the tactical, operational and strategic level, one fostered a climate of transformation along the spiritual plane.
The 75th USARIC’s command chaplain, Col. (Chaplain) Ken Harris initially came to Fort Irwin to provide religious support for fellow 75th Soldiers. His invitation to attend the garrison’s chapel services, seek guidance through prayer or request spiritual counseling captured attracted both service members and civilians hailing from France, Japan, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States.
“I was blessed to pray alongside Soldiers from allied nations for their work in protecting freedom – including freedom of religion – around the world,” said Harris, a Lutheran pastor and an associate for a Fortune 500 financial services company. “Peace can be made through strength. Strength can be enhanced by interoperability of advanced technology … Peace through strength is also forged through enhancing relationships with our brothers- and sisters-in-arms.”
Stanley and the command team believe that cultivating these relationships will redefine the 75th USARIC’s role in ensuring the Army dominates every battlespace against any adversary.
“The 75th earned its place at Project Convergence by identifying solutions that improve processes across multiple domains,” said Stanley. “Who we engage and how we help them accomplish their objectives at PC-C4 will pave the way for future 75th USARIC missions that will deliver Army of 2030 and design the Army of 2040.”
By SFC John Carkeet
FirstSpear Friday Focus – RESTOCK: Tiger Stripe Wind Cheater
Friday, April 5th, 2024Get it before it’s gone! Last drop of Tiger Stripe Wind Cheater.
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Retired Army Ranger Receives the Silver Star Medal
Friday, April 5th, 2024JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. — Almost 31 years after conducting various missions and operations during the Battle of Mogadishu, retired Army Maj. Larry Moores received the third highest military decoration for valor in combat — the Silver Star Medal.
Gen. Gary Brito, commanding general, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, presented Moores with the Silver Star during a ceremony in front of family and friends March 25.
“Mr. Moores, I personally salute you for your tenacity, your toughness in a crucible combat, and your commitment to our Army, and your fellow Soldiers,” Brito said. “Your actions in Somalia were for them, your brothers in arms, and are a living tribute to the Ranger Creed, which I know that you hold dearly. Thank you so much for your selfless service. I am honored to present to you today the Silver Star.”
Moores enlisted in the U.S. Army on his 18th birthday. After basic training, he was assigned to the 1st Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger for his first assignment. Within a few months, he was ready to accept the Ranger School test and headed straight to the school at Fort Benning, Ga., now called Fort Moore.
“Ranger School was very difficult and definitely a great challenge, but I think coming from the battalion to become a ranger student was more of a validation process,” he said. “I was in the first class after the invasion of Grenada, so I was a young Soldier who had already been in a combat experience in the early 1980s.”
In the summer of 1993, then-President Bill Clinton deployed Task Force Ranger comprised of Rangers, Special Operators and TF-160 Special Operations Aviators to Mogadishu, Somalia, to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah-Adid. The majority of that task force was composed of American Rangers from the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.
“When I was in Somalia as part of Task Force Ranger, it was my third tour with the unit, so I understood their capabilities and how prepared we were to execute the mission,” Moores said. “We conducted a series of missions before that, so we knew the environment and the threat. Knowing how well trained your people were and the mission made it easier to lead.”
On Oct. 3, 1993, Task Force Ranger became embroiled with Somalia militiamen in an overnight gun battle, the intensity of which was likened, at the time, to the most intense firefights in Vietnam. That afternoon, Task Force Ranger boarded Army helicopters for what was expected to be a textbook raid to capture two of Adid’s lieutenants.
Using rocket-propelled grenades, Somalia militiamen shot down two U.S. Blackhawk helicopters, turning a planned raid into an unexpected rescue mission.
Although this particular battle was very challenging for Moores, and the 75th Ranger Regiment unit, due to the number of Soldiers who were killed or were wounded, Moores said it was astonishing to be able to demonstrate their capability during that operation.
“We lost 18 [Soldiers] in battle and had more than 70 Rangers wounded. That was a tough experience because we were overwhelmed — with the odds against us. But it was amazing to watch the young Rangers still execute under very difficult circumstances,” he said.
Moores hard work and leadership during that operation resulted in him being inducted as a Distinguished Member of the 75th Ranger Regiment in 2005 and into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame in 2017.
“I was honored to serve with the Rangers, so whenever I went to those ceremonies as a young Soldier, I was always in awe of the people who were being inducted,” he said. “Then to be inducted myself was an amazing honor. But for me it was a team effort. It wasn’t Larry who was inducted, it was the whole unit.”
Retired Army Col. Larry Perino, a fellow Ranger platoon leader who served with Moores during the Battle of Mogadishu, attended the Silver Star ceremony, and emphasized how important it was for him to be there to witness it.
“I would not have missed this event for the world. This is long overdue and well deserved,” Perino said. “Larry is deserving because he chose to go back to that street to try and break us out. Despite going out there and getting riddled with bullets time and time again and losing Rangers, he had the intestinal fortitude to lead his men to help us.”
Moores credits the entire regiment for him being able to receive the honor of the Silver Star Medal.
“This Silver Star Medal is about those types of units and all of the months and months of hard work,” he said. “It was an amazing opportunity to be a part of those special operations. I feel so blessed to have worked with the people that I did over all of these years. I never would have thought that I would have been able to do all of the things that I did, and meet and work with so many amazing people along the way.”
Moores currently works as a contractor within the TRADOC G2 (Intelligence).
By Katisha Draughn-Fraguada, TRADOC Communication Directorate
The Rear Admiral from Armageddon Gear
Thursday, April 4th, 2024
Making those fine adjustments when using the tripod as a rear support can be difficult. The Rear Admiral, Tripod Rear Support Bag, allows the user to make elevation and traverse adjustments without moving the tripod. The Rear Admiral is quick and easy to put on and take off and works with any stock design.
Weighing only approximately 6 ounces you will never know it is there until you make those small adjustments to get on target and hear the steel ringing. The bag fill is user-adjustable, made in the USA, and guaranteed for life!
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