George w. casey jr. - Federation of American Scientists

y Lieutenant Colonel (P) John Haynicz, Senior Intelligence Trainer
“Our Army will embrace FSO with the best leaders
and Soldiers we’ve ever had–and because of their
acute ability to rapidly absorb and apply warfighting
skills, we’ll be stronger and much more capable than
we’ve ever been.”
–Brigadier General James Yarbrough,
Commanding General, JRTC
In October 2010, the Joint Readiness Training
Center (JRTC) conducted its first full spectrum operations
(FSO) rotation in eight years. The 3 rd Brigade
Combat Team (BCT), 82 nd Airborne “Panthers” deployed
to Fort Polk, Louisiana and conducted the
rotation with the augmentation of an engineer battalion,
aviation battalion, air defense artillery (ADA)
company, and a chemical, biological, radiological,
and nuclear (CBRN) platoon. The rotation spanned
21 days and consisted of five days of situational
training exercises (STX), three days of command
post exercises (CPX), and eight days of force-onforce
(FoF), while simultaneously conducting 15
days of live fires. This article provides the general
overview of the rotation and general observations
from the Task Force Leaders and Intelligence
Trainer/Mentors of JRTC. What follows are more indepth
articles focusing on specific topics and singlesource
discipline observations.
It is important to mention that none of the observations
made during this rotation could have
been collected without the hard work and determination
of the Panther Brigade. They were the “men
in the arena” and it was an honor to partner with
these great Soldiers and Paratroopers as they took
any challenge or obstacle head on. The 3 rd Brigade,
82 nd Airborne continually internalized any lesson or
observation and immediately implemented “fixes.”
Their energy, professionalism, and technical and
tactical competence ensured that the lessons observed
from this rotation could be applied throughout
the Army.
FSO is defined in FM 3-0, Operations, 27 February
2008, as “Army forces combine offensive, defensive,
and stability or civil support operations simultaneously
as part of an interdependent joint force to
seize, retain, and exploit the initiative, accepting
prudent risk to create opportunities to achieve decisive
results. They employ synchronized action–lethal
and nonlethal–proportional to the mission and
informed by a thorough understanding of all variables
of the operational environment.” The FoF portion
of the rotational scenario involved a country
that was experiencing a border dispute and required
the Panther Brigade to conduct a forced entry operation
through parachute assault to seize an airfield,
conduct a defense of the lodgment, and finally conduct
an attack to defeat enemy forces. This design
allowed the Brigade to work all three aspects of FSO
in different proportions.
As stated earlier, the rotation spanned 21 days
consisting of five days of STX, three days of CPX,
and eight days of FoF. The STX lanes ran concurrently
to CPX, allowing all company/troop/batteries
to hone battle skills while their battalion (BN)
and BCT staffs were conducting the CPX. The infantry
companies conducted an attack to seize an
objective (terrain oriented), a raid to seize a high
value target (enemy oriented), and a 36-hour defense
which was conducted against a conventional
force that possessed unmanned aircraft systems
(UAS), indirect and direct fire weapons (to include
BMPs/T-80 tanks.) The cavalry troops conducted
a screen mission against a mechanized force, a reconnaissance
of an infantry battalion objective, and
finally a combined arms live fire exercise. The forward
support companies conducted combat convoys
that included replenishment operations and
establishment and security of a logistic resupply
point against a determined conventional threat.
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