Photo By Capt. Jan Bender | Military intelligence (MI) soldiers from across the U.S. and Canada organize into...... read more read more
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CAMP WILLIAMS, Utah - The California National Guard’s 223rd Military Intelligence (MI) Battalion played host to more than 600 Guard, Reserve and active component soldiers from 13 states and Canada who converged on Camp Williams, Utah, for Panther Strike 2014.
This annual training exercise spanned June 6-22 and simulated full-spectrum intelligence-gathering operations within a deployed combined joint task force.
“This is not your average [annual training event]. Over the years, Panther Strike has really made a name for itself. It’s by far the most robust and organized intelligence [exercise] that I’ve been a part of,” said Lt. Col. Dave Church, commander of the San Francisco-based 223rd MI Battalion and this year’s Panther Strike 2014 Task Force commander. “Our staff has put a tremendous amount of time, toil, and effort … with the guidance and support of the [300th MI Brigade], into making this a dynamic experience for operators from across the various intelligence disciplines and other low-density specialties … and it’s rewarding to see it all come together.”
Panther Strike traces its origins to 2003, when the first exercise of its kind gathered human intelligence Soldiers from the Florida Army National Guard on Camp Blanding Joint Forces Training Center, Florida, to perfect their craft in a team-centric training evolution.
Now, 11 years later, this animal has evolved into a large-scale collective intelligence venue, displaying the interdependency and interconnectivity of the different intelligence specialties.
The first week of the exercise was devoted to training Soldiers for their specific role in the scenario, which unfolded in week two.
“The first week was completely invaluable, I’ve never seen the level of professionalism and intelligence that came out of these instructors. We had some [Soldiers] who hadn’t used their skill set since [Army Initial Training] … and in one week we were able to get them operational and the next we were able to make them exceptional,” said Massachusetts Guardsman Sgt. Jesse Waidler, a French-speaking human intelligence analyst with Boston-based D Company of the 223rd MI Battalion.
Waidler led a cell which synthesized human intelligence and counter intelligence collections during the exercise.
“I could easily just stay in my own state and train as a [human intelligence analyst], but incorporating all of our other intel functions, is what makes this unique. Panther Strike has the opportunity to emulate an entire deployed environment for the MI community … and that’s rare.”
This year’s exercise leveraged the synergized efforts of military intelligence Soldiers from across the human, counter, signals, imagery, geo-spatial and all-source intelligence fields to capture or eliminate cells of Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents in a Utah valley used to simulate Afghanistan’s Kunar province.
“For the current conflicts we’re involved in, Utah provides some critical elements of realism. Salt Lake [City] is at the same elevation as Bagram Air Field there in Afghanistan, and many Soldiers comment on the similarities in the terrain,” said Utah National Guardsman Col. Derek Tolman, commander of the 300th MI Brigade, which is headquartered in Draper, Utah, and serves as the higher headquarters for many of the units that rotationally host Panther Strike. “The exercise also tends to gravitate here, because there is a lot of command support and investments have been made to have all the necessary infrastructure in place.”
Each year, the organizers of the exercise work to improve different aspects of the training experience for Soldiers at every echelon of play. Among other improvements, 2014 saw a commitment of more than $1.2 million from the Department of the Army’s Intelligence Directorate, focused on reinforcing training on and access to the Army’s all-source intelligence or fusion software platform known as the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A). This powerful program gives military intelligence professionals the ability to intake, process and analyze feeds of raw data and intelligence from across a broad array of sources, enabling analyst to synthesize, overlay and interpret the information so they can provide intuitive products, predictive analysis and impactful assessments of the current threat to commanders on the ground.
“I can tell you that [intelligence] products that I compiled back in Iraq in [2004 and 2005] that took me two to three weeks to complete … I can now put that same information on [DCGS-A] software and a young analyst these days can do that same product in probably half an hour … it’s just incredible what they can do with this capability,” said U.S. Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer 4 Mitchell Minnaert, who works full-time as a senior all-source analyst at the Military Intelligence Readiness Command and served as an observer controller for the all-source portion of this year’s exercise. “It’s real time saver. When you’re going through 500 to a 1,000 messages a day and you have to filter through that immense amount of information, you need a tool that allows you to do that. This is the way of the future.”
Many refer to DCGS-A as the MI analyst’s primary weapon system. However, unlike an M4 rifle, Soldiers can’t just reacquaint themselves with this powerful platform out on the armory floor or during a typical field exercise.
“We have to be in a [Secret Compartmentalized Information Facility] to truly leverage the tools of our trade. It’s a phenomenal opportunity.” said Minnaert whose served for more than 27 years in the MI arena and deployed six times between Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. “[Panther Strike] is really the only exercise that I’m aware of that has a full-spectrum military intelligence focus. There are plenty of other exercises focused on our other war fighter functions … maneuver, logistics, [command and control], but for MI … this is it.”
The exposure and technical training on DCGS-A benefited more than just an American audience.
“I was very impressed. I learned [the software] for the first time ever, and I absolutely loved it. It’s an awesome system,” said Canadian Army Reserve Cpl. Jean-Philippe Lacasse, who served as an all-source analyst during the exercise.
Real-world, Lacasse is an intelligence operator with the 7th Intelligence Company based out of Ottawa, works full-time as a strategic policy analyst at Canada’s Department of Public Safety (the equivalent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) and he too has deployed to Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan over his 13-year career.
“I’m a producer of intelligence in the military and I’m a consumer of intelligence in my day job … the two are complimentary. I see both sides,” said Lacasse. “The challenge with intelligence now is not the collection of information like it was years ago … now the choke point happens at the analytical level … and I think a system like DCGS helps alleviate that. It automates some portions of the intel cycle which allows you to be more creative with the analytical portion.”
The talent pool Panther Strike draws from expands with each iteration. This year’s events saw increased participation from Canadian forces, and observers from both Australian and British forces. Next year, foreign participation is expected to increase from other partner nations.
The opportunity to attend Panther Strike is coveted. For years, exercise coordinators have been forced to turn away just as many U.S. Soldiers as they accepted, due to funding constraints. Nearly 1,400 Soldiers requested to attend in 2014.
More than 75 VIPs, including elected officials and military leadership from across the country stopped in to watch the events unfold.
The interplay across the different service components and throughout the broad spectrum of intelligence specialties opened active duty soldiers' minds to new possibilities.
“Essentially we view [Panther Strike] as the [Joint Readiness Training Center] for MI. It got a lot of visibility from the active component this year. We have nothing like this on the active duty side … no exercise that’s catered specifically to all of our [specialties] across the MI disciplines,” said Sgt. 1st Class Neville Grant who put his duties on hold at Fort Riley, Kansas, as the noncommissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) of the 1st Infantry Division’s Intelligence staff, to serve as the NCOIC over the exercise’s observer-controllers.
“I think we’re going to try to steal it,” laughed Grant, “or at least replicate it in some way, shape, form or fashion. All my guys that participated had nothing but glowing remarks. We’re looking forward to the next iteration to see how they build on it.”
Many leaders see cross-pollination of ideas and training ingenuity as central themes of this yearly synergistic event.
“It’s amazing to see everyone feed off one another. There’s an obvious fervency in the air,” said Church. “Soldiers not only enjoyed the training, but they seemed to relish the companionship, the networking, the relationships. [Panther Strike] fosters a real sense of community between all our components and our international partners.”
| Date Taken: | 06.22.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.17.2014 14:21 |
| Story ID: | 142432 |
| Location: | CAMP WILLIAMS, UT, US |
| Web Views: | 474 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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