Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Brad Miller | Cpt. Gibb Clark and Cpt. Ty Smith discuss movement plans for the redeployment effort...... read more read more
Drawsko Pomorski, Poland – Moving Soldiers and equipment to meet deadlines can be a daunting task but making arrangements to go back home can be just as difficult, especially when the movement will cross numerous international borders and even an ocean. Logistic and operations officers from the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division are meeting these challenges head on, in conjunction with active duty, U.S. Army Reserve, Army National Guard and allied partner units as Exercise Anakonda 2016 winds down.
Anakonda 16 is a Polish-led, multinational exercise taking place in Poland June 7-17. This exercise brings together more than 31,000 participants from more than 20 nations to train together as one military demonstrating that the U.S. and its partners are ready for and capable of dealing with any contingency.
At the end of a training exercise, Army logistic and operations officers work to ensure all personnel and equipment successfully make the return to home station or to other locations.
“We are deploying out of Anakonda… to eight different European countries to conduct follow-on training,” said Cpt. Gibb Clark, the assistant brigade operations officer with 1st ABCT. “That makes our situation more unique than a normal force that is going back to just the United States. There are a lot of constraints with time, and moving across many European countries, who all have different rules and regulations regarding personnel and equipment.”
Clark said these constraints across several European countries, including Poland, Germany, Estonia or Bulgaria, create many challenges. Knowing the requirements for each of these countries and the planning factors that go into moving personnel and equipment is crucial.
“I think working with the multinational partners has been a big thing in the redeployment efforts, too,” Clark explained. “We’re not only working with the international partners in the operations realm but we’re also working with a lot of the sustainment parties from the multinational partners. With all the different countries operating at Drawsko Pormorski Training Area, we have to coordinate with them to get their personnel and equipment back to their home countries as well.”
1st ABCT, as they will continue training missions throughout Europe, drew vehicles from Germany, while U.S. Army Reserve and National Guard units, who account for approximately 30 percent of the vehicles involved in the exercise, had to arrange transportation of their vehicles overseas via strategic air transport followed by train travel to the training area.
“This is a bigger challenge for them because their timeline is a lot different,” said Cpt. Ty Smith, assistant logistics planner with the 1st ABCT. “They can only spend a certain amount of days due to the [legal] restrictions,” explained Smith. “Getting them back in time for all of their flights has also been a challenge.”
One way the team helps to mitigate these concerns is that every day at noon, logisticians from across the battlefield, to include multinational partners, have a meeting to discuss supply statuses to identify shortages and where they need to replenish water, rations and repair parts. They recently began capturing unit movement timelines to keep track of when the units need to depart DPTA and schedule them to go through the wash racks and assign the units’ vehicles to specified staging areas depending on their mode of transport.
“The challenge has been the amount of troops and equipment. Usually during a National Training Center rotation, it’s strictly one brigade but we’ve brought on over 1,000 multinational partners, as well as the reserve and guard units,” explained Smith. “Being able to bring them all together, to work out a plan that works for everyone’s redeployment timeline is challenging.”
According to Clark, there are 22 different units operating just in DPTA that are all operating in different areas. 1st ABCT is responsible for managing those units in the cleanup process.
Clark feels that while there have been challenges, there have not been any insurmountable issues.
“It’s real-world but it also had really good training value added, especially when it comes to project planning and mission planning, both on the maneuver side and on the sustainment side,” Clark said. “The other countries involved have different systems, different ways of doing things but it’s definitely that interoperability and integration that comes into play whenever we’re planning any type of mission, whether it’s deployment or redeployment or execution of live fire.”
Anakonda 16 is a premier training event for U.S. Army Europe and participating nations and demonstrates that the United States and partner nations can effectively unite together under a unified command while training on a contemporary scenario.
| Date Taken: | 06.15.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 06.17.2016 05:10 |
| Story ID: | 201509 |
| Location: | DRAWSKO POMORSKIE, PL |
| Hometown: | CHARLOTTE, NC, US |
| Hometown: | FORT STEWART, GA, US |
| Web Views: | 382 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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