Photo By Staff Sgt. Jeremy Miller | U.S. Soldiers from the 169th Field Artillery Brigade, and the Kuwait Land Force’s...... read more read more
CAMP ARIFJAN, Kuwait – U.S. and Kuwaiti Land Forces recently concluded Operation Spartan Thunder, a bi-lateral military-to-military training exercise aimed at expanding joint capabilities and strengthening interoperability, Aug. 14, at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait.
Soldiers assigned to the 169th Field Artillery Battery and Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 130th Field Artillery Regiment, worked with their KLF counterparts to test the processes of their individual fire missions. Working with the U.S. Hi-Mobility Artillery Rocket System and the Soviet Heavy Multiple Rocket Launcher systems, U.S. Forces successfully communicated targets to the KLF for fires missions, while the KLF successfully passed targets back to the U.S. to process.
“To my knowledge this is the first time a bi-lateral training exercise like this has taken place between the U.S. and KLF with these systems,” said Maj. John Sweet, the 169th Field Artillery Kuwait team lead.
“We were able to successfully send target information from our field artillery headquarters to a joint fires coordination cell,” said Capt. Michael Sprigg, 130th HIMARS Field Artillery commander. “From there it was transmitted to the KLF artillery liaisons officers, then to their firing units and finally to their 9A52 SMERCH rocket launchers. We conducted numerous ‘dry fire’ missions in order to exercise and perfect the process.”
Through hands-on learning, Spartan Thunder helped U.S. and KLF artillery assets by establishing tactics, techniques and procedures for processing, clearing and executing field artillery fires in a joint environment. While the 130th FA focused on target acquisitioning and coordinating calls for fire, the 169th FA Bde., practiced facilitating airspace clearance for KLF artillery – an essential task for any coalition bi-lateral fires team.
“The biggest take away for my unit during this operation was communication,” said Sweet. “Commanders, fires cell LNOs, master gunners and launcher crews all had the ability to work beside their respective counterpart and communicate and establish their individual processes.”
“In addition to the technical processes and the information-sharing formats that we refined during Spartan Thunder, we were able to build partnerships with our KLF artillery counterparts,” said Sprigg. “It's one thing to conduct meetings and seminars with each other; it's quite a different thing to go out to the field together and integrate our processes in real-time.”
Operation Spartan Thunder not only continued the relationship of U.S. and KLF forces but also took the knowledge, training ability and expectations to a whole new level.
“We accomplished all of our training objectives, even the most ambitious ones,” said Sprigg. “The exercise really exceeded our expectations."
“During our combined after action review the question was asked from both U.S. and KLF when we would have the ability to conduct a live fire training exercise together,” said Sweet. “This enthusiasm really shows the accomplishment we had here.”
| Date Taken: | 08.31.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 08.31.2017 10:12 |
| Story ID: | 246676 |
| Location: | CAMP ARIFJAN, KW |
| Web Views: | 312 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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