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CAMP WILLIAMS, Utah – A UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter flies over a simulated Afghan village teeming with role players dressed as locals. Soldiers on foot and in Humvees travel back and forth on a dusty road from the village to a forward operating base (FOB), while role-playing insurgents plan to ambush a passing convoy.
This scenario was just part of the training that played out June 8-22 during Panther Strike 2014, a large-scale, cross-component intelligence exercise. The training, at Camp Williams, Utah, attracted more than 600 National Guard, Army Reserve and active duty military intelligence (MI) soldiers from across 13 states, as well as international forces from Australia, Canada and Great Britain.
Human, counter, signals, imagery, geo-spatial and all-source military intelligence professionals worked together throughout the training to capture or eliminate cells of Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents in a simulated valley of Afghanistan’s Kunar province.
While some intelligence collectors gather information from people, imagery and documents, signal intelligence soldiers pull unseen electromagnetic waves out of thin air and transform them into tangible data. Over the course of this year’s training, signals intelligence soldiers had many opportunities to hone and improve their skillset.
“The training here has a very practical application,” said Spc. Mark Johnson, a linguist with B Company, 142nd MI Battalion, Utah National Guard, who worked in the signal intelligence tactical operation center during Panther Strike. “We are getting a lot of hands-on experience with equipment that our unit doesn’t have, so it’s been great.”
Staff Sgt. Nicole Cesmat, a signals intelligence analyst with the A Company, 223rd MI Battalion, California Army National Guard, echoed Johnson’s sentiments, adding, “Training like this is extremely important, because we get to practice our [job] and see kind of what it would be like in a deployed environment.”
Signals intelligence soldiers also took advantage of a unique opportunity available at Camp Williams.
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Garon Power, the officer in charge for the Low Level Voice Intercept course, said that since 2010, Camp Williams has been the LLVI center of excellence for the world. MI personnel from every branch of the military come to Camp Williams for this course.
Power and his staff pulled from the LLVI course curriculum to give the signals intelligence team a high-level, in-depth supplement to the Panther Strike training this year.
The course teaches different techniques to intercept and analyze communications in order to offer coalition forces an advantage.
“This training helps soldiers feel more confident in their skills,” Power said.
Sgt. James Smith, a signals intelligence analyst with D Company, 297th Military Intelligence Battalion, Georgia Army National Guard said the LLVI course was perfect training.
“It teaches everything you need to know for the basics of LLVI,” Smith said.
Smith, who has been to Panther Strike exercises in previous years, said the course is beneficial for soldiers who have never been through the training as well as for those who have.
“Every time I come out here, I always learn something new,” said the veteran. “Whether it’s something about the equipment I didn’t know, or a way [to gather signals intelligence].”
The course encompasses three days of classroom instruction followed by seven days of hands-on experience out in the field. They conduct mounted and dismounted operations, air insertions from a Black Hawk and operations around the FOB, gathering intercepted communications and distributing it to the other intelligence assets.
Power said the goal of Panther Strike and the LLVI course was to create a training environment that is as realistic as possible and to facilitate teamwork among the various aspects of the intelligence community.
“All intel is really different, and we rarely get to work with each other,” Cesmat said. “It’s nice to see how we all work together to get information out.
Part of Cesmat’s job is to gather and analyze products to send to human intelligence collectors in order to create profiles, she said, which is something Panther Strike really focused on this year.
“Each intelligence discipline is a wheel on the vehicle,” Power said. “We all need to work together to get where we need to go.”
| Date Taken: | 06.21.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 06.21.2014 12:33 |
| Story ID: | 133924 |
| Location: | CAMP WILLIAMS, UT, US |
| Web Views: | 1,746 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, Signals intelligence analysts amp up Panther Strike training, by 1LT Brianne Roudebush, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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