7ATC hosts European Military Trainers Conference

Photo By Tomarius Roberts | U.S Army Soldiers assigned to 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment provide security in their fighting positions during training exercise Saber Junction 20, at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center, Hohenfels, Germany, Aug. 11, 2020. Saber Junction 20 is a 7th Army Training Command-conducted, U.S. Army Europe-directed annual exercise designed to assess the readiness of the U.S. Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade to execute unified land operations in a joint, combined environment, and to promote interoperability with participating allies and partner nations. This year's exercise will take place primarily at 7ATC's Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels Training Areas in Bavaria. U.S. military forces stationed in Europe routinely conduct these types of exercises with allied and partner nations to enhance interoperability and readiness. (U.S. Army Photo by Cpl. Tomarius Roberts)  

GRAFENWOEHR, BY, GERMANY

01.13.2021

Story by Staff Sgt. Christopher Stewart 

7th Army Training Command

GRAFENWOEHR, Germany—The 7th Army Training Command hosted the Conference of European Training Centers virtually with multinational Combined Training Center leaders across Europe held at the 7th ATC headquarters, Grafenwoehr, Germany, Jan. 13.

The conference consisted of high-ranking military trainers from 31 allied and partner nations, and discussed current real-world conflict case studies, the changes of training center rotations, how to further connect training between nations, and innovations in the training environment.

“This conference brings leaders together to discuss ideas that can better inform the group to support our national objectives and interoperability within NATO,” said Brig. Gen. Christopher Norrie, commander of 7th ATC. “This dialogue today helps each individual see different facets of a different problem, reframe the problem and then allows us to dissect and understand it so we can solve it together.”

While other combined training center conferences are focused at the action-officer level, CETC specifically targeted colonel-and-above leadership for European training centers, said Lt. Col. Gregory Pavlichko, chief of operations at the Joint Multinational Simulations Center.

The conference was broken into five major topics with a panel of speakers and moderators from different nations contributing to the conversation. Each panel presented a situation and generate feedback with the members of the conference.

Topics ranged from ‘how to overcome interoperability challenges at all echelons’ to ‘important training innovations in the next 5 to 10 years.’
“Decisions aren’t being made at this conference, but it’s laying the groundwork for future training opportunities and development of future training environments, bringing a more holistic look to training in Europe,” said Pavlichko.

Last year’s CETC introduced the Persistent Training Environment concept, a JMSC and 7th ATC effort to combine efforts in live training and virtual training to connect units and training centers both within Europe and at locations in the U.S. This year, directors from both the JMSC and Training Support Activity Europe led the discussion on how 7th ATC is moving toward the PTE goal of creating the Synthetic Training Environment.

The STE is a network capable of collective, mixed-reality training that can be built for easier accessibility by allied and partner nations and is operational regardless of location.

“We can have little pockets of live training (throughout European CTCs) but support the higher echelons with a simulation event that is connected amongst all of the centers,” said Pavlichko.

The highlighted benefit of the STE is providing staffs up to multinational corps more quality repetitions =in training without the resource and time investment of a large-scale live exercise. The STE is always live, meaning that U.S., allied and partner units can plug into a scenario from multiple locations without the time-consuming building of architecture or hardware issues.

Even with the rapid introduction of digital advancements in training, the conference reiterated the importance of close relationships between allies and partners.

“In the end after all the procedural commonalities and technicalities are established, if there is not trust between us, our command posts, between us as professional Soldiers, then we have accomplished little,” said Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa. “If there are rich personal and professional connections between us, we can accomplish anything.”

• Date Taken: 01.13.2021
• Date Posted: 02.02.2021 15:19
• Story ID: 388191
• Location: GRAFENWOEHR, BY, DE