Alabama Guard, Romania build chemical warfare readiness

Photo By Cody Muzio | Soldiers from the Alabama National Guard's 31st CBRN Brigade and Romania's 72nd NBC Defense Battalion join forces to crosstrain on tactics, techniques, procedures, and equipment at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, April 24-30, 2022. The troops integrated into combined teams for exercises involving hazardous material reconnaissance, analysis and decontamination; Nuclear, Biological, Chemical Reconnaissance Vehicle (NBCRV) operations; site security; medevac; M4 carbine marksmanship; machine gunnery and more. The force-to-force engagement was the second part of a two-part event, with the first held in Romania in September 2021. Both engagements focused on maintaining readiness and enabling troops from both nations to work together in the same environments to defend against imminent threats from near-peer adversaries in the Black Sea region. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Spc. Cody Muzio)  

AL, UNITED STATES

05.02.2022

Story by Spc. Cody Muzio 

Joint Force Headquarters - Alabama National Guard

A distinct cacophony of laughter and machine-gun fire echoed through the air on a warm, bright weapons range at Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
It was—almost—enough to conceal the palpable restlessness and tense disquiet permeating the week’s training.
As a huddle of Soldiers snuck into a shady spot for a brief rest, they could be seen slapping one another by the shoulder, recounting stories of their service, and pulling patches off their uniforms to swap with their intercontinental counterparts.
One Romanian Soldier sticks a gifted U.S. flag patch on his shoulder, then turns to his countrymen to flex his newly star-spangled arm. It’s a scene of jovial camaraderie familiar to any Guardsman who has trained alongside foreign partners, but this time was different.
This time, it hid a deeper conflict: a restless uncertainty bolstered by resolute determination.
“Right now,” said Master Sgt. Bogdan COJANU-POPESCU, “we see combat threats, like in the war in Ukraine on our border. We see the Russians are suspected of using chemical weapons, and we have to be prepared to meet these challenges if they come into our territory.”
COJANU-POPESCU is assigned to Romania’s 72nd Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Defense Battalion which traveled to the U.S. to train alongside the Alabama National Guard’s 31st CBRN Brigade to complete a two-part combat readiness exercise designed to enable seamless integration between the two forces in a worst-case scenario.
The first part, “Guardian Mask 21,” took place near Sighișoara, Romania, and familiarized Alabama Soldiers with Romanian weapons, equipment, vehicles, tactics, techniques, procedures, terrain, and more. The second, “Carpathian Dragon 22,” took place at Camp Shelby this spring to provide Romanian troops with U.S.-centric training.
“The end goal is to help incorporate interoperability between two CBRN forces,” said 31st CBRN Brigade Operations Sergeant Major, Sgt. Maj. William Godshall. “That way, if we end up on the same battlefield together, we could conduct missions together and supplement each other. We could send Soldiers to operate with them and they could send Soldiers to operate with us and this will cut down on training and time lost in an operational environment.”
Capt. John Bailey, commander of the 440th Chemical Company, one of the 31st CBRN Brigade’s subordinate units, said both phases of the engagement focused on mission readiness, but the shadow of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war that erupted in the interim gave Carpathian Dragon an even more relevant warfighting urgency.
“The scenario we built, we specifically geared toward a Russian theme, with the idea of what if something were to happen over there,” Bailey said.
“It’s something they talked about a decent amount and there’s definitely concern, but the more we train together, we both get stronger. That’s on their back door, so they’ve taken what we do and they’re practicing it at home and we see how they train and practice it over here. I really believe we’re on a path to fall in and really hit the ground running if something was to happen where we’ll be needed over there.”
Romania shares two borders with Ukraine and looks across the Black Sea to Ukraine, Russia, and Russian-occupied Ukrainian land.
In an April speech, Chief of the National Guard Bureau Gen. Daniel Hokanson called the National Guard’s State Partnership Program (SPP) a significant factor in Ukraine’s success fending off Russian offensives.
“You don’t have to look far to see the impact of the SPP,” Hokanson said. “The conflict in Ukraine highlights the interconnectedness of the security environment.”
Ukraine and Romania both entered the State Partnership Program in 1993—its inaugural year—pairing Ukraine with the California National Guard and Romania with Alabama.
Guardian Mask and Carpathian Dragon are just two of the hundreds of military-to-military engagements that have taken place in the 29 years since.
Both covered a wide range of CBRN Soldier skills: site security, reconnaissance, hazardous material identification, decontamination, convoy tactics, marksmanship, automatic gunnery, Stryker vehicle operations, gas chamber training, and several other classes, briefings, and collaborative training exercises. Throughout it all, teams of Romanian and Alabama Soldiers were spliced together to conduct missions as a single, seamless unit.
Bailey said It showcased the strengths of the State Partnership Program.
“As the National Guard, we work hard to really ensure that we’re always ready to integrate with our NATO allies and defend peace wherever it’s needed,” he said. “Partnerships are what make us the National Guard. It’s who we are, whether that’s partnerships with our parent services or partnerships with foreign nations or partnerships with local authorities in civilian communities across the country. It opens the eyes of the Soldiers to understand that there are other ways to do things out there and it really creates innovation between the partners.”
COJANU-POPESCU agreed, adding that the innovation cuts both ways.
The different military philosophies between the U.S. and Romanian armies led to both nations sharing ideas they will each implement for future operations. While U.S. units usually specialize in one mission set and coordinate with other units to accomplish complex objectives, he said Romanian units are designed to be more self-sufficient.
“We learned so much from it,” COJANU-POPESCU said, “and afterward, we got to express our opinions about it and I gave them some ideas to improve communication.”
Godshall said the 31st CBRN Brigade has plans to continue ramping up the speed and intensity of state partnership engagements as the readiness of NATO allies and the readiness of U.S. service members to operate in Eastern Europe are an immediate priority.
“This made us better,” Godshall said, “and it helps build the relationship, but it also helps build toward further even larger exercises. I think that if we continue to have engagements like this, that we could just drop in and operate side by side and integrate at a moment’s notice.”
For COJANU-POPESCU and his team, these exercises and the capabilities they build are more important than ever.
“After this, I trust more in myself,” he said, “I will never be the same man. And now I know that if we were to be in that kind of situation to work together to confront an enemy, we will be successful because we broke language barriers, social barriers, and equipment barriers. The U.S. troops know how to operate our equipment, we know how to operate their equipment and if we are to work together, no matter what the situation, we will be successful.”

• Date Taken: 05.02.2022
• Date Posted: 05.26.2022 17:25
• Story ID: 421676
• Location: AL, US