
www.eur.army.mil Polish Forces training at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center engage in a fire fight with simulated opposition forces represented by 1st Battalion 4th Infantty Regiment. Poland is one of 11 european nations with forces supporting training with the 173rd Airborne during the full-spectrum training envirnoment exercise going on at Hohenfels and Grafenwoehr training areas. The US Army Europe's 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team stationed in Italy is conducting Europe's first full-spectrum training operation, and it began with a bang: 1500 paratroopers jumped in to Hohenfels Oct. 5 in the first brigade-sized airborne operation in Europe since the unit's combat jump into Iraq in 2003. A battalion of Slovakian soldiers is augmenting the US Soldiers fighting in the role of enemy forces. Never before have former eastern bloc and US forces worked together as opposing forces in such numbers. Twenty-five years ago we trained to fight against Eastern Europe, now we fight and train with them. This training is also a change from the exercises that prepare units for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Instead of focusing on counterinsurgency operations, the US, alongside troops from more than 10 other nations, are encountering complex training scenarios where they attack and seize objectives, defend against or attack conventional enemy forces and rapidly transition into a stability operations posture.
us
army
Europe
usareur
173rd
airborne
sky
soldiers
polish
fire
fight
battle
paratroopers
italy
troops
12th
aviation
air
support
command
multinational
armed
forces
former
eastern
bloc
partners
allies
Poland
Slovenia
Slovakia
Bulgaria
special
operations
sof
Germany
national
guard
reserve
joint
readiness
center
full
spectrum
training
environment
operation
scenario
fste
future
of
warfare
conflict
force-on-force
conventional
counterinsurgency
infantry
tactics
hohenfels
graf
military