|
|
|
Updated: August 14, 2002 |
|
|||
| News | Products | Events | Newsletter | |
| US Military Millennium Challenge 2002 Experiment With New Deployment and war-fighting capabilities | |
|
In a wide scale exercise
designed to experiment with futuristic warfare concepts, The U.S. Joint
Forces Command is conducting Millennium Challenge 2002 experiment, as part
of a Department of Defense-wide transformation process. Simulating a
realistic battlefield in the year 2007, MC02 explores new methods of
planning, organizing and fighting a global conflict in a joint service
environment. The exercise is taking place simultaneously at 17 simulation
sites and nine live sites across the USA. The MC02 It's the largest joint
military experiment and exercise of its kind in history, with more than
13,500 military and civilian personnel participating. MC02 runs July 24-Aug
15.
picture of Striker team assault - by Maj. Laura Singer, US Army The adversary is represented by the "OPFOR", which has the the potential to escalate a high-end, small-scale regional conflict into a major theater war. Most of the live action will occur on U.S. training ranges in the Southwestern USA. The experiment will test four strategic concepts: effects-based operations, operational net assessment, standing joint force headquarters and the joint interagency coordination group. The joint task force commander of the experiment is Lt. Gen. B.B. Bell, commander of the Army's III Corps at Fort Hood, Texas. The XVIII Airborne Corps of Fort Bragg, N.C., was planning for 18 months to have been the joint task force for the exercise, but was called into action in Afghanistan. The rapid transition was achieved in only two weeks, by activation of the Joint Forces Command's standing joint force headquarters - an expert team that maintains a kind of "shadow headquarters" for such contingencies. Similarly, the joint task force command element is scheduled to relocate several times during the exercise, deploying by specially configured C-17 aircraft and and the command ship USS Coronado which is seen below sailing from San Diego on July 30.
Similar to operations in the Gulf, Kosovo and Afghanistan, the initial phases of the exercise included an extensive air force activity, to destroy enemy threats and infrastructure, to prepare the ground for the land battle. The first ground operations involved the securing of a forward base, by 750 paratroopers from the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, from Fort Bragg, N.C.. The paratroopers jumped into Bike Lake Army Airfield at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin, Calif., early Tuesday morning (July 30), followed by a heavy drop of two High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled vehicles and two 105-mm Howitzers. The paratroopers’ mission was to seize and secure the airfield for the landing of several Styker Infantry Carrier vehicles aboard C-130 aircraft, which followed two days later. The Navy and Marine Corps participation, designated Millennium Dragon 2002, will also include naval, amphibious and air strikes components. On the Marine's ship to objective maneuver, an amphibious landing at Camp Pendleton will be performed, as well as a heliborne assault, assisted by special forces teams, neutralizing a target suspected as a storage base of "weapons of mass effect". During the later stages of the exercise the Marines will further conduct exercises in an urban warfare training facility. |
 Armoured Infantry Carriers from the Striker Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Ft. Lewis, Wash.) offload from a C-17 on deployment on arrival at Victorville base, CA. for Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise. Below - On August 2nd, The Strikers were later deployed directly to the Bicycle Lake airfield at ft. Irwin, simulated an in-theater deployment via C-130 transport aircraft. (Photos - above: US Army, by Pvt. Sara Wood, below: US Army by Marc Loi).
|
|
|
Highlights:
|
© 2002 All Rights Reserved - Defense Update International |
