Working remotely

Photo By Sgt. Ryan Barnes | Soldiers from the 41st Field Artillery Brigade run through fire mission procedures during the Victory Glide command post exercise March 9, 2021, on Tower Barracks, Grafenwoehr, Germany. The exercise was the first step in the validation process for the staff of V Corps, which was reactivated on Oct. 16, 2020. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ryan Barnes)  

GRAFENWOEHR, GERMANY

03.18.2021

Story by Master Sgt. Ryan Matson 

7th Army Training Command

V Corps, the U.S. Army’s newest Corps headquarters, is up and running, as the command and staff completed their initial step in validation, after completing the Victory Glide Command Post Exercise March 5 to 13, 2021, at the Joint Multinational Simulations Center in Camp Aachen, Grafenwoehr, Germany.

And they did it all remotely. Members of the V Corps staff participated in a challenging series of computer-based war games simulations hosted from Camp Aachen while at their headquarters in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

“Victory Glide is training the V Corps staff,” Maj, Chris Topham, the officer in charge of planning Victory Glide, said. “The staff is new, so they’re in the forming phase of institutional building. This is an opportunity for the staff to come together and train as they fight at a staff level. It’s basically like squad Situational Training Exercise training in a tactical environment. They’re basically doing that type of training as a combined staff, operational-tactical training.”

Topham faced a daunting task. He and the JMSC team, built the architecture of the exercise within a month’s time. The JMSC carries out the important task of hosting command and control exercises for the U.S. Army and its allied partners, from company-level to 3-star command and staffs.

Topham explained that Victory Glide was actually formed when the prior planned exercise, Austere Challenge, was cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“Effectively, Victory Glide is replicating the Austere Challenge Command Post Exercise for V Corps,” Topham said. “Lt. Gen. Christopher Cavoli (the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa Command) and the USAEURAF operations staff made the decision that the newly-formed V Corps could still greatly benefit from this training, even if Austere Challenge was not going to be conducted in its entirety.”

The exercise could not have been successful, Topham said, without a lot of long hours and dedication on the part of the JMSC staff. One of the main figures in this process was Mike Choffy, lead modeling and simulations planner for JMSC, Topham said.

“He put the technical integration for the exercise together,” Topham said. “He built the simulation architecture for this exercise, and then networked it between Kaiserslautern and Grafenwoehr, Germany, and Fort Knox, Kentucky.”

Choffy explained that the exercise is run by simulations programs where staff will have to make crucial decisions and exercise warfighting functions as they would in a real-world combat scenario. While planning and building the simulations specific to a massive exercise like Austere Challenge, which would have basically involved a quarter of a million allied personnel worldwide takes about a year to 16 months to develop, Choffy and his team were able to rescope the exercise specific to V Corp’s needs within three-weeks time.

“We knew it was technically possible, but it was a definite challenge and learning experience,” Choffy said. “From a simulations intent, it went from a high-fidelity simulation to a medium-fidelity simulation within the three-weeks’ timeframe.”

Brig. Gen. Matthew Van Wagenen, the deputy chief of staff of operations of NATO, Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, and incoming deputy commander of V Corps, was one of the key figures on the ground overseeing the staff’s progress as it works toward becoming the Army’s newest validated Corps headquarters staff.

“Talking with Brig. Gen. Norrie (7th Army Training Command commanding general), we discussed how important it is to be at the initial oversight of the validation process, which is why I’m here,” Van Wagenen explained.

“Basically Victory Glide starts the process, which leads into Defender 21, and then into the Warfighter CPX, the culminating event.”

Despite all the work, through Victory Glide, the JMSC was able to aid V Corps in taking the first steps toward the long road of validating the command and staff of USAEURAF’s newest fighting force.

• Date Taken: 03.18.2021
• Date Posted: 03.18.2021 07:35
• Story ID: 391687
• Location: GRAFENWOEHR, DE