Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Williams | Capt. Anna Janeska, a physician in the Army of the republic of Macedonia, and Maj....... read more read more
VIPAVA, Slovenia – This year’s exercise Immediate Response 14 focuses on foreign disaster response and humanitarian assistance, the goal is to see how well both civil affairs groups would perform when working together.
“I never had any experience working with US Army Reserve civil affairs Soldiers in the past and I know they have a specialty outside the military that they bring with them,” Sgt. Michael Leon, a civil affairs noncommissioned officer with Delta Company, 80th Civil Affairs Battalion, said. “A lot of times they have a specialty that our teams may not have and knowledge so when we have questions we may have a potential subject matter expert working with us.”
During the first week of the exercise, Army Reserve Soldiers with the 353rd Civil Affairs Command taught humanitarian disaster relief courses and shared deployment experiences with their active duty counterparts in the hope of bringing both teams together.
Leon said this exercise was a unique experience for members of his unit since they had the opportunity to learn from reserve civil affairs Soldiers, and receive his hands on training and working along side 100 multinational soldiers.
“This exercise helped me the most by working with our allies abroad and seeing how they operate a emergency operation center which imitated real life situations,” Leon said. “Working with the locals you don’t get that too much and what we did out here was pretty much the meat and potato of what civil affairs does.”
Maj. John P. Cooney, a public information officer and exercise observer and controller, with the 353rd, said he was impressed with how well the active-duty civil affairs team adapted to the Army Reserve civil affairs mindset.
“The active-duty civil affairs component is built to support specific missions like special forces in theater and the reserves is built to provide functional skill sets, but I think we work very well together,” Cooney said. “The major difference is the reserves has functional skill teams so we have lawyers, engineers, economists who can provide more real world expertise.”
After working in the emergency operations center, both teams switched from participating in the exercise to then moved on to a real world situation as the Army Reserve civil affairs Soldiers took the active duty team on an assessment of a land slide site.
Recalling on the lessons the reserve Soldiers taught them, the active-duty team focused on mastering core tasks of civil affairs, such as regional studies and populace and resource control, which will help Soldiers gain the cooperation of local government officials and agencies.
“We’re here to support the host nation and if they can see that they can rely on their neighbors then they won’t need the U.S. to take on a lead role,” Leon said. “Some people are going to react differently to stressful situations, but experience will help you keep a calmer head so you can react accordingly.”
Leon said the tactics and procedures his team learned helped make the exercise a worthwhile experience. He said exercises like this not only show how each component can help one another, but also shows how strong civil affairs is across the board.
“They did a good job of going in there and identifying what their limitations,” Cooney said. “I think it’s important for active duty civil affairs teams to partake in more exercises like this because you have 11 different countries meaning you have 11 different cultures and organizations to communicate with so this will make them stronger when they deploy. Half the battle with civil affairs is working with other people and understanding who you’re working with and being able to relay that information back to your command."
Cooney said this exercise is a great example how active-duty and reserve Soldiers can build better working relationships with one another. He feels it’s the direction the Army should take in order to strengthen it’s infrastructure when Soldiers jump from one occupation to another.
“I think it’s always good to see how each others other’s counter part works,” Cooney said. “In the Army civil affairs has been dominated by the Army Reserve, so it’s important for those active-duty Soldiers coming from a military police or engineer unit to see how civil affairs operates and what we’ve been doing for the past 50 years.”
| Date Taken: | 08.24.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.23.2014 23:14 |
| Story ID: | 143091 |
| Location: | VIPAVA, SI |
| Web Views: | 610 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Bridging the gap: Active and reserve CA teams work together during IR 14, by SFC Gregory Williams, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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