CommunityEditor
03-20-2008, 08:31 PM
FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — It’s 2013 and some saber-rattling ruffians in “Ahurastan” are threatening to invade neighboring Azerbaijan, a U.S. ally located in the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian seas. The Pentagon needs to know what its options are — immediately.
There’s a reason you’ve never heard of Ahurastan: It doesn’t actually exist. This fictional troublemaker, however, is the key player in a war-fighting exercise conducted during the past week at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, a sprawling new facility at Fort Leavenworth where midcareer officers from the four services and other nations’ armed forces are taught “the art and science” of modern military strategy. Ahurastan may be make-believe, but the 200 individuals who helped cultivate response plans for this mock political crisis did so as though real lives were in danger. After all, Army officials said, five years from now, these officers may be running a joint task force headquarters that is tapped to calculate strategies for dealing with a similar situation, and it’s essential they know how to do it.
Part of the college’s Joint Advanced Warfighting Studies program, this exercise, dubbed “Sudden Death,” is like a game of chess that is played with the benefit of several teammates.
“It’s about thinking, it’s about acting, and it’s about communicating,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Clay Easterling, an instructor at the college. All three of those skill sets came into play Wednesday as the weeklong drill culminated with the presentation of a detailed course-of-action briefing to the “JTF commander,” a role filled by retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas M. Montgomery, who oversaw U.S. forces in Somalia during the 1990s, including the incident in Mogadishu that became known as “Black Hawk Down.”
Here’s the intel on this scenario: Amid a political tempest, the northernmost provinces of Iran break off in 2010 and form the Republic of Ahurastan. Two years later, in response to growing unrest in the Azerbaijan border region, U.S. European Command deploys JTF Caspian to assess the situation. Within a few months, an invasion of Azerbaijan appears imminent.
The Ahurastanians are talking tough, but “deterrence” is the optimal outcome, said Marine Maj. Brian Dryzga, a UH-1N pilot who served as a weapons tactics instructor at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz., before arriving at Fort Leavenworth last year.
“We don’t want a conflict,” he stressed, noting, though, that coalition forces must be prepared for that possibility.
As a member of the exercise’s JTF effects cell, Dryzga helped hash out the “lethal and nonlethal” options that would be available should the situation escalate; they ranged from diplomatic measures to full-on military engagement. For a helicopter pilot, there was a steep learning curve, he said — and that’s a good thing.
“They get you out of your comfort zone and force you to use new thought processes,” Dryzga said.
With an array of communications assets at their disposal, the troops within this pseudo-headquarters for JTF reached out to the individual services to lend their expertise. Air Force Maj. Steve Bording, for example, served as an air component liaison during Sudden Death. He was a B-52 instructor pilot stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., before coming to Leavenworth.
Fellow airmen attending the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., participated in the briefing via a video link. Depending on the JTF’s needs, Bording said, Air Force assets could be used to assist the Azerbaijani military by crating in supplies aboard C-5 and C-17 cargo lifters — or to spook the would-be aggressors by flying show-of-force missions in its F-22 and F-35 attack jets.
Richard Miles, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who has participated in this exercise for the past three years, said extensive field experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has taught many of these officers the importance of coordinating with nonmilitary agencies, such as the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, each of which sent representatives to the exercise. These outfits may not handle the hardware, but their expertise can be just as valuable. When questions arose during the exercise about the region’s terrain and its populace, for example, Miles’ background was invaluable.
Ultimately, the goal of this exercise is to stabilize a region that’s teetering on the edge of chaos, and the smartest way to do that, leaders have learned, is by taking advantage of and harnessing the many diverse resources that are available. It’s a matter of recognizing that everybody brings something to the table.
“It’s very important to create a common perspective,” said Maj. Joakim Karlquist, a combined arms officer in the Swedish army. “We have different backgrounds, different training and different experiences, and it’s a good thing. It’s something we need to capitalize on.”
Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/03/military_leavenworthexercise_032008/
There’s a reason you’ve never heard of Ahurastan: It doesn’t actually exist. This fictional troublemaker, however, is the key player in a war-fighting exercise conducted during the past week at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, a sprawling new facility at Fort Leavenworth where midcareer officers from the four services and other nations’ armed forces are taught “the art and science” of modern military strategy. Ahurastan may be make-believe, but the 200 individuals who helped cultivate response plans for this mock political crisis did so as though real lives were in danger. After all, Army officials said, five years from now, these officers may be running a joint task force headquarters that is tapped to calculate strategies for dealing with a similar situation, and it’s essential they know how to do it.
Part of the college’s Joint Advanced Warfighting Studies program, this exercise, dubbed “Sudden Death,” is like a game of chess that is played with the benefit of several teammates.
“It’s about thinking, it’s about acting, and it’s about communicating,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Clay Easterling, an instructor at the college. All three of those skill sets came into play Wednesday as the weeklong drill culminated with the presentation of a detailed course-of-action briefing to the “JTF commander,” a role filled by retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas M. Montgomery, who oversaw U.S. forces in Somalia during the 1990s, including the incident in Mogadishu that became known as “Black Hawk Down.”
Here’s the intel on this scenario: Amid a political tempest, the northernmost provinces of Iran break off in 2010 and form the Republic of Ahurastan. Two years later, in response to growing unrest in the Azerbaijan border region, U.S. European Command deploys JTF Caspian to assess the situation. Within a few months, an invasion of Azerbaijan appears imminent.
The Ahurastanians are talking tough, but “deterrence” is the optimal outcome, said Marine Maj. Brian Dryzga, a UH-1N pilot who served as a weapons tactics instructor at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz., before arriving at Fort Leavenworth last year.
“We don’t want a conflict,” he stressed, noting, though, that coalition forces must be prepared for that possibility.
As a member of the exercise’s JTF effects cell, Dryzga helped hash out the “lethal and nonlethal” options that would be available should the situation escalate; they ranged from diplomatic measures to full-on military engagement. For a helicopter pilot, there was a steep learning curve, he said — and that’s a good thing.
“They get you out of your comfort zone and force you to use new thought processes,” Dryzga said.
With an array of communications assets at their disposal, the troops within this pseudo-headquarters for JTF reached out to the individual services to lend their expertise. Air Force Maj. Steve Bording, for example, served as an air component liaison during Sudden Death. He was a B-52 instructor pilot stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base, La., before coming to Leavenworth.
Fellow airmen attending the Air Command and Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., participated in the briefing via a video link. Depending on the JTF’s needs, Bording said, Air Force assets could be used to assist the Azerbaijani military by crating in supplies aboard C-5 and C-17 cargo lifters — or to spook the would-be aggressors by flying show-of-force missions in its F-22 and F-35 attack jets.
Richard Miles, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who has participated in this exercise for the past three years, said extensive field experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has taught many of these officers the importance of coordinating with nonmilitary agencies, such as the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, each of which sent representatives to the exercise. These outfits may not handle the hardware, but their expertise can be just as valuable. When questions arose during the exercise about the region’s terrain and its populace, for example, Miles’ background was invaluable.
Ultimately, the goal of this exercise is to stabilize a region that’s teetering on the edge of chaos, and the smartest way to do that, leaders have learned, is by taking advantage of and harnessing the many diverse resources that are available. It’s a matter of recognizing that everybody brings something to the table.
“It’s very important to create a common perspective,” said Maj. Joakim Karlquist, a combined arms officer in the Swedish army. “We have different backgrounds, different training and different experiences, and it’s a good thing. It’s something we need to capitalize on.”
Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/03/military_leavenworthexercise_032008/