Photo By Amy Phillips | Army Reserve units 456th Area Support Medical Company (New Hampshire), the 912th...... read more read more
FORT HUNTER LIGGETT, Calif. – More than 4,500 service members from around the country, to include Hawaii and Puerto Rico, participated in the annual Combat Support Training Exercise (CSTX) Feb. 21 through March 13, 2015. The CSTX simulates units mobilizing and establishing an initial staging base (ISB), Camp Roberts, and deploying forces into an area of operations, Fort Hunter Liggett (FHL).
The significance of this exercise is that it is the only one in the Army that is geared toward combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) units. And Fort Hunter Liggett is the largest Army Reserve installation that provides the premier training grounds for these large-scale exercises with more than 160,000 acres of ideal un-encroached terrain and Mediterranean climate similar to areas the military currently deploys to.
During the CSTX, CS elements such as medical and military police and CSS elements such as fuel providers and truck drivers, execute their individual tasks during the mission rehearsal phase, then their collective tasks during the mission operations phase.
Additionally, the CSTX is important in that is a joint training exercise which supports the Joint/Total Army Force Policy outlining the need to create a single, integrated, and operationally ready force.
The Army Reserve partnered with the Navy and Air Force reserves, the California National Guard at Camp Roberts, and the Canadian Officer Exchange Program participated in this year’s CSTX.
One of the initiatives of this CSTX was incorporating the Biometric System capabilities for the first time into the training scenarios.
Military police were given hands-on training on how to use the biometric equipment and then utilized the skills to gather intelligence and track key personnel throughout the local population. The scenario provided the soldiers an opportunity to analyze the information they captured to understand key personnel in the area while denying the enemy the ability to hide.
According to Col. Mark Bartholf, the exercise director of the 91st Training Division (TD), this year’s exercise represented the operational environment Army forces are facing today as well as aspects of likely future environments the Army will operate within.
What this means is that instead of deploying to well-established bases that were often built through contractors, troops can expect to deploy into an austere environment and build an ISB capability from ground up. Having the ISB at Camp Roberts enabled Army Reserve engineers to utilize all their skills from designing an ISB to actually building it.
Having the ISB at Camp Roberts also supported the Nation Wide Move operations, an Army Reserve long-haul trucking capability. This provided realistic convoy runs to FHL to test transportation units’ ability to communicate and coordinate the movement of thousands of pieces of equipment.
The movement of thousands of pieces of equipment and troops are monitored through the Army’s Visual Battle Space 2, a system FHL has readily available for units year-round. Using the virtual mission command systems gives units the ability to plan major operations of support of fictitious missions. To continually improve Soldier’s skills, units would then run actual missions based on their experiences during the CSTX and deploy to Fort Irwin for more training.
The CSTX is focused on the troops in year four of the five phase Army Reserve Force Generation Model, which means they will be ready for deployment the following year. Later this year, the Warrior Exercise (WAREX) also held at FHL, is for troops in year three of the “ready pool,” which means they will be attending a CSTX exercise next year.
The 91st Training Division’s (TD) role in these two large-scale training exercises is to design the scenarios and provide observer/controllers to evaluate how troops are doing.
“The Joint Force can’t go to war without Army Reserve support. When the joint force deploys into a theater of operations, the Army support to other services - ASOS – provides the sustainment backbone for the Joint capabilities. The CSTX provides the environment for the Army Reserve sustainers to practice that critical capability,” said Bartholf.
| Date Taken: | 03.17.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 03.18.2015 19:36 |
| Story ID: | 157442 |
| Location: | FORT HUNTER LIGGETT, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 274 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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