On Point: the United States Army in Operation Iraqi ... - Boekje Pienter

ight thing to do. More than 6,200 soldiers supported special operations, and another 33,220soldiers executed critical missions throughout Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere, in awide variety of units and organizations. Some of these include the 32nd Army Air and MissileDefense Command, the 244th Theater Aviation Brigade, the 204th Air Traffic Service Group,the 416th Engineer Command, the 52nd Ordnance Group, the 377th TSC, the 335th TheaterSignal Command, the 352nd Civil Affairs Command, the 513th Military Intelligence Brigade,the 3rd Medical Command, and the 75th Field Artillery’s Sensitive Site Exploitation and WMDDiscovery teams. 59These soldiers distributed bulk fuel, water, and ammunition and managed mortuary affairs,enemy prisoner of war operations, theater communications, transportation, air and sea portoperations, and combat support hospitals. Many soldiers wore “purple” uniforms, workingsolely in a joint environment, while others remained “Army Green” but nonetheless supportedall of the services and theater personnel. For example, in support of I MEF, the 377th TSCtransported more than 4,266 containers from 16 January to 19 April, 9,572 short tons of cargoand just under 10 million gallons of bulk fuel from 20 March to 19 April 2003. During thesame period, soldiers provided similar support to the Air Force, including handling more than18 million gallons of fuel. 60Support to I MEFBy design, Marine Corps forces are not organized or equipped for sustained land combat,and certainly not for a campaign ashore lasting months in an offensive hundreds of miles intothe interior of a country with a poor infrastructure and virtually no coastline. Accordingly, theArmy provided significant reinforcement from both active duty and reserve units to round outor—in the case of rocket artillery, Patriots, civil affairs, and psychological operations—providethe I MEF capabilities they required for a sustained campaign.So as Army forces flowed into the theater, Marines assigned to and supporting I MEFalso arrived and prepared. The I MEF, commanding 1st Marine Division (1 MARDIV), 1Air Wing, the 1st Armoured Division (UK), and other supporting units, made the supportingattack on the right flank of CFLCC’s advance to Baghdad. At the time the Marines executedtheir initial operation to secure the southern oil fields in Iraq on 20 March 2003, the Armyhad attached more than 2,700 soldiers to I MEF to provide the capabilities not resident inMarine forces, including: a Patriot missile brigade and five Patriot batteries; an engineer groupwith two engineer battalions and three bridge companies; a military police (MP) battalion; anuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) defense battalion; an air medical evacuation company;a signal battalion; a civil affairs brigade; a psychological operations (PSYOP) battalion; a corpssupport group with seven transportation companies; and numerous smaller units. 61 These unitscontributed to the success of the I MEF in OIF.Theater Missile Defense EmploymentThe Army also supported theater air and missile defense (TAMD) as part of a joint theaterair and missile defense effort. TAMD had to be provided not only over Army, Air Force, MarineCorps, and coalition forces, but also over the nations of Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Bahrain,Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The 32nd Air and Missile Defense Command (AAMDC), based inFort Bliss, Texas, provided the Army component of joint theater air and missile defense.64