• Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) 97-3-Run over three weeks in late August and early September of 1997, JTFEX 97-3 was a "final exam" for the combined GW CVBG/CVW/ARG/MEU (SOC) team. JTFEXs-the crown jewels of USACOM exercises-are the largest and most complex series of exercises regularly run by USACOM. Even as the sea services are using them as benchmark exercises for Navy groups, the other services are utilizing them in the same way: to test their own fast-reaction units (such as the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or the 2nd Bombardment Wing based at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana).
With the Category II training completed, the ships and aircraft of the battle group headed home for a final leave period. During this time, the Category III training and briefings for the battle group staff and leaders took place around Washington, D.C. While their actual sequence and locations are classified, the briefings and war games were conducted by a variety of military and intelligence agencies, with the goal of sharpening the minds of the CVBG/CVW/ARG/MEU (SOC) leadership. When these exercises were finished, the CARGRU Four staff started preparing for the next group, which was based around the new Nimitz-class carrier John Stennis (CVN-74).
JTFEX 97-3
In the confusing (maybe anarchic is a better word) post-Cold War world of joint and coalition warfare, the USACOM staff must package and deliver to the unified/regional CinCs units that are ready to "plug in" to a joint/ multinational JTF. The JTF must start combat operations on almost no notice, and function in an environment where the ROE can change on a moment's notice. That means the units assigned to the JTF must be trained with an eye to functioning in a variety of scenarios that were unimaginable as recently as a decade ago. Some of these may even involve situations where conflict may be avoided (if a show of force is sufficiently effective), or where conflict may not be an option (in what are called Operations Short of War).
Training units for situations like these requires more than the simple force-on-force training that was good enough for the military services during the Cold War. Exercises like Red Flag (at Nellis AFB, Nevada) and those at training facilities like the Army's National Training Center (at Fort Irwin, California) were always based upon assumptions that a "hot" war was already happening. Because of this, the engaged forces' only requirement was to fight that conflict in the most effective manner possible. While the services teach combat skills quite well, teaching "short-of-war" training is a much more complicated and difficult undertaking. Only in the last few years (after high-cost lessons learned in Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia) has progress been made on this daunting training challenge.
So far, the leader in this new kind of "real world" force-on-force training has been the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana.[77] The JRTC staff, for example, was among the first to insert into traditional force-on-force training what the military calls "friction" elements and non-traditional ideas like "neutral" role-players on the simulated battlefield, and to include a greater emphasis on logistics and casualty evacuation. JRTC's focus on these kinds of layered issues have made it a model for other joint training operations run by USACOM (such as the JTFEX-SERIES exercises, which are run approximately six times a year-three on each coast).
The result of all this thinking has been a gradual evolution in the scenarios presented to participants in the JTFEXs. As little as three years ago, every JTFEX was essentially a forced-entry scenario into an occupied country that looked a lot like Kuwait, and the opposing forces were structured much like the Iraqis. The critics who were complaining that USACOM was preparing to "fight the last war" were making a good point. Today there'd be no justice in that criticism. Now, each JTFEX is made a bit different from the last one, or for that matter from any other. For one thing, USACOM has gotten into the habit of making the JTFEXs truly "joint," by spreading out the command responsibilities. By way of example, a JTF headquarters based at 8th Air Force headquarters at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, controlled JTFEX 97-2 (run in the spring of 1997), while the first of the FY-1998 JTFEXs will be an Army-run exercise, controlled by XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Now that each of the services has opportunities each year to be the JTFEX "top dog," the scenarios have tended to become not only more fresh and innovative, but also more fair in the distribution of training responsibilities and opportunities.
The quality of JTFEX exercises has also been improved by means of what is called a "flexible" training scenario-that is, a scenario without highly structured schedules and situations. In more structured scenarios, for example, participants knew exactly when and how the exercise would transition to "hot war" status. In current JTFEXs, there is much more uncertainty. Furthermore, the actions of the participants can affect the "flexible" elements of the scenario, and these actions can be scored positively or negatively. It is even possible that participants might contain a JTFEX "crisis situation" so well that a transition to a "hot" war situation might never occur. But creative work by the USACOM J-7 staff makes this unlikely. Thus when a commander or unit does well, "friction" and challenges are added so no participant gets a chance to "break" the scenario. On the other hand, if a unit has itself been "broken" by the situations it faces, the exercise staff may choose to give it additional support or opportunities to "get well enough to go back into the game," as it were. You have to remember that exercises like the JTFEXs are designed to build units up, not break them down.
For the GW group, the focus in the late summer of 1997 was getting ready for their particular "final exam," JTFEX 97-3 (the third East Coast JTFEX of FY-97). With their deployment date scheduled for early October 1997, every person in the battle group was eager to get through the exercise and move on to the Mediterranean. But the USACOM J-7 training staff wasn't going to make that easy. To that end, several new elements were being added to the scenario in anticipation of new capabilities soon coming on-line. Within a couple of years, for example, the entire force of Ticonderoga-class (CG-47) cruisers and Arleigh Burke-class (DDG-51) destroyers will be receiving software and new Standard SAMs capable of providing the first theater-wide defense against ballistic missiles. Thus in JTFEX 97-3, the opposing forces were assumed to have a small force of SCUD-type theater ballistic missiles, some possibly armed with chemical warheads. The U.S. forces were not only expected to hunt these down, but to "shoot" them down with Patriot SAMs or with the Aegis systems on board several of the escorting vessels. The group's abilities in this area would be closely watched by USACOM.
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For a closer look at the outstanding JRTC program, see my book