Latest news with #TransformationinContact
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Seeing farther, striking deeper, this brigade is pushing its drones
Soldiers with the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division are in the midst of a training exercise with Philippine allies that has them pushing farther and striking deeper with the help of new drones. The 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, is forward deployed in the Philippines, training with the 7th Infantry Division of the Philippine Armed Forces as part of a Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center, or JPMRC, exercise. Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, 25th Infantry Division commanding general, told Army Times on Monday that the most challenging part of the exercise so far has been the environmental factors. High temperatures and monsoon conditions have slammed troops as they've operated across islands and jungles in the Luzon area of the Philippines. The exercise marks the brigade's second evolution of the Army's Transformation in Contact, or TIC, initiative following its first evolution in 2024. As part of the initiative, which seeks to modernize and evolve formations as they prepare for real-world deployments, soldiers received new drones, counter-drone equipment and electronic warfare tools. First armor brigade conducts combat training center rotation with new tools Since then, the unit has been issued farther-reaching drones with both medium- and long-range capabilities, giving soldiers nearly 10 times the range of previous drones. Last year, units were limited to about a 3-kilometer distance for drones to scout enemy locations. Now they can see, sense and strike targets as far as 30 kilometers out, Evans said. 'It creates increased survivability,' Evans said of the striking range. 'It enhances their ability to protect themselves with greater standoff and strike with loitering munitions or weaponized drones.' Meanwhile, the brigade also brought 3D printing capabilities, which it has used to make replacement parts for equipment and build nearly 50 first-person-view drones so far during the exercise, he said. The brigade brought an estimated 2,000 soldiers from Hawaii and Guam for the exercise, with Philippine partners bringing about the same amount of manpower. They're facing off against a simulated battalion-size enemy force equipped with its own drone, counter-drone and electronic warfare capabilities. During its Philippine rotation last year, which was also an exportable combat training center evolution, the brigade didn't have infantry squad vehicles. This time, however, it does, and the vehicles have made a major difference for troops in both mobility and sustainability, Evans said. The Army's TIC initiative first focused on the brigade level with dismounted units. The second iteration is looking to make similar changes in mechanized or armor formations. That also ties in division-level assets. On this run for the 2nd Mobile Brigade Combat Team, the 25th Infantry Division is using its headquarters to simulate a larger force and bringing division assets, such as long-range fires, to the brigade. Troops are also using the 25th Infantry Division headquarters to synchronize and integrate with the Philippine's 7th Infantry Division headquarters, Evans said. '[Their] main objective is procedural interoperability,' Evans said. 'U.S. and Philippine forces train sustainment, movement and maneuver together. See further, sense better and be able to strike.' Following the initial field training, the units will gather at Fort Magsaysay, Philippines, and then conduct a combined maritime, land and air movement of more than 400 kilometers into 'enemy' territory north of the outpost to Camp Melchor F. dela Cruz in mid-June, he said.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
101st Airborne Division welcomes new commanding general at Change of Command ceremony
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (WKRN) — The Change of Command was held at Fort Campbell Division Parade Field Friday. The 101st Airborne Division welcomed Maj. Gen. David Gardner as its 50th commanding general. Gardner comes from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. There, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Training (G-3/5/7) for the U.S. Army Forces Command. 📧 Have breaking news come to you: → 'It is the honor of a lifetime,' Gardner said. 'It is unbelievably humbling to join the ranks of the former and current members of our nation's most storied and recognized division.' Gardner also previously served as the commanding general of the Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Johnson, Louisiana. Community leaders, local officials and more said goodbye to Maj. Gen. Brett Sylvia, who had assumed command over the division in July 2023. Sylvia helped develop a large-scale, long-range air assault capability and led the U.S. Army's 'Transformation in Contact' initiative. Under Sylvia's leadership, the 101st Airborne Division deployed soldiers to North Carolina for Hurricane Helene relief efforts, multiple European countries to support Operation European Assure and the U.S. southern border. JANUARY: Fort Campbell soldiers sent to southern border after Trump executive order 'Few could have predicted how the events of the next two years would create an environment of unprecedented opportunity and challenge,' Sylvia said. 'And to each of those challenges, the men and women standing before you today didn't just rise – they soared! Today, I stand before you with great pride knowing that the 101st Airborne Division has not only built upon a tremendous legacy, but also emerged having firmly established itself as the unit of choice for any mission, any time, any place, and against any foe.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
First armor brigade conducts combat center rotation with new tools
The Army recently put its first armor brigade through a combat training center rotation under its new Transformation in Contact initiative. The 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division launched Exercise Combined Resolve this past week in Hohenfels, Germany, at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center. The brigade is the first armored unit to conduct the new Transformation in Contact modernization effort. The initiative seeks to deliver new equipment to operational units as they prepare for major training events and deployments. The aim is to gain feedback and make adjustments to deployment needs while continuing the regular readiness preparation that operational units undergo for standard deployments. This Army division will change how armor brigades and divisions fight The initiative began with three infantry brigades, one each from the 101st Airborne Division, 25th Infantry Division and 10th Mountain Division. Those units saw the addition of Infantry Squad Vehicles, drones, sensing and strike capabilities. The work resulted in changes to the structure of the infantry brigade, which have since been dubbed 'Mobile Brigade Combat Teams.' Final decisions about the layout of those brigades have yet to be made. The TIC initiative continues with this armor brigade and seeks to raise those changes to the division level also, officials said. 'Raider Brigade is spearheading the Army's Transforming in Contact initiative and experimenting with new capabilities to enhance battlefield effectiveness while deployed to Europe,' said Maj. Gen. Christopher Norrie, commanding general of the 3rd Infantry Division. 'The lessons learned through this exercise will help inform the Army how an armored brigade combat team fights on future battlefields.' Exercise Combined Resolve pairs U.S. and NATO forces with partner nations to validate interoperability. The armor brigade used a variety of recently acquired unmanned robotic systems, counter drone tools and electromagnetic decoys during the training. The 1st ABCT's participation in TIC is structured around four key phases: adapting how the unit fights, integrating emerging technologies, reorganizing formations to suit mission needs and rapidly incorporating new capabilities as they become available, according to an Army release. Maj. Gen. Thomas Feltey told Army Times in April that his unit, 1st Cavalry Division, oversaw training for 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division during that unit's Germany rotation. The experience helped kickstart TIC work in the cavalry unit. But, Feltey said, the armor units have their own characteristics separate from the traditional dismounted infantry units. 'An ABCT has a lot of different moving pieces,' Feltey said. 'Our battlespace is much larger, and things move faster.' Feltey plans to convene senior armor leaders for feedback on how to reconfigure the units and their assets to capitalize on the new tech and approaches to fighting fast with armor. These sessions will be called 'Iron Horse sprints,' he said.
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This Army division will change how armor brigades and divisions fight
As soldiers with the 1st Cavalry Division continue to offload their equipment from their recent Europe rotation, they're blazing a path and planning for a new kind of armored unit they will be at the heart of creating. Soldiers with the division will help the Army determine how to reorganize an Armored Brigade Combat Team to fight with new equipment, farther-reaching sensors and increased firepower — with the division at its back. Maj. Gen. Thomas Feltey spoke with Army Times recently about his division's work under the Army's 'Transformation in Contact' initiative. The move seeks to modernize and evolve formations as they prepare for real-world deployments. The effort was announced in 2023 and began with three infantry brigades: the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division; 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division; and the 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. Over the course of the next year, the three brigades added sensors, drones and a host of other enabling technologies, while also reconfiguring the makeup of various brigade elements to streamline communications and ramp up the infantry brigades' capabilities. The Army has since entered the TIC 2.0 phase, which will focus on heavy units such as the 1st Cavalry and its ABCTs. Feltey told Army Times that the division oversaw training for the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain, while the infantry unit was in Germany. That helped give them a start on what was required for such transformative work. 'No one's ever starting from zero, we're continuing to move forward and not standing in place,' Feltey said. This exercise is shaping the long-term future of Army infantry brigades Through the course of the transition, the infantry units built new versions of units, dubbing them Light Infantry Brigade and Mobile Infantry Brigades, respectively. Those concepts had been developed in certain Army planning circles and were adjusted through the training and experimentation by the infantry units. But the armor units are drawing up their own plans for what a new type of armor brigade might look like. 'An ABCT has a lot of different moving pieces,' Feltey said. 'Our battlespace is much larger and things move faster.' While ubiquitous drone coverage helped infantry units, various kinds of drones will be needed for the longer-reaching, longer-ranging armored units, for example. The division's artillery, air cavalry squadron and electronic warfare units have all been designated as part of the transformation. Feltey is convening a host of senior armor leaders to assist in feedback on how to reconfigure the units and their assets to take advantage of new tech and novel approaches to fighting fast with armor. These sessions are called 'Iron Horse sprints,' he said. The timelines are a little longer for the 1st Cavalry Division. The culminating event for their TIC work will happen at a National Training Center rotation in Fort Irwin, California, in 2027. That's in part because the division is also modernizing its main equipment, with the A4 variant of the Bradley and the A7 variant of the Paladin artillery system. It's also on track as the next unit to receive the new Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, Feltey said. The two-star expects to see communications upgrades, much like the infantry units did with systems such as the Integrated Tactical Network, Star Shield satellite communications and the Mobile User Objective System, an improved UHF satellite communications system. While the armored units will receive more drones for better reconnaissance, they will need more striking capabilities from those drones, he said. 'We don't have the ability to suppress everything while we're moving now, so that's one of the problems we're trying to solve,' Feltey said. A key part of the process will be hooking the division assets into what the brigade needs when it needs it. The division expects to have units training at the company level with new assets and formations by early 2026 and battalion-level training to commence in the summer of 2026, ahead of the 2027 event.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
101st Airborne tests new battalions designed for large-scale battles
During a recent home station training exercise, the 101st Airborne Division put three of its newly created division-focused battalions to the test in a large-scale air assault. In the months leading up to the Army's Operation Lethal Eagle, the division formed the 302nd Division Intelligence Battalion, 21st Division Signal Battalion and 326th Division Engineer Battalion to help push mass into the fight as the Army prepares for a division-level fight. The Army's new chief has a plan and it's all about warfighting The units, still considered in their initial operational capability phase, were used extensively throughout the exercise at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Col. Travis McIntosh, the division deputy commander, told Army Times. The three battalions worked their respective assets — intelligence, signals and engineers — as assets for the larger division during this year's exercise, which featured large-scale movements and maneuvers with force-on-force fighting drills down to the squad level and company live-fire ranges, McIntosh said. 'That 21-day division-level exercise gave us the opportunity to take a little more than 7,000 of our soldiers into the field,' McIntosh said. This year's Operation Lethal Eagle, held from Feb. 19 to March 10, included 82nd Airborne Division soldiers and assets from joint forces such as the Marine Corps and Air Force. The exercise saw 1,100 soldiers attack by three separate air assaults using 34 helicopters, McIntosh said. The 'Geronimo,' or opposition force that the soldiers faced, used their own drones and technology to mimic what observers are seeing in the Russia-Ukraine war, McIntosh said. That turned part of the exercise into a hide-and-seek mission for each side's command post — the first spotted was usually the first targeted and likely destroyed. But the work wasn't limited to standard training, according to McIntosh. Troops integrated 65 new pieces of technology, a move inspired by the service's larger Transformation in Contact effort to modernize and ready its troops while keeping units in the deployment cycle. Transformation in Contact, or TIC, efforts previously focused on three separate brigades, one each with the 101st, 10th Mountain Division and 25th Infantry Division, respectively. But the Army has pushed the experimentation up the chain to the division level, in what Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George has called 'TIC 2.0.' Soldiers participating in this year's Operation Lethal Eagle got a taste of what their 10th Mountain counterparts experienced during a recent rotation of their TIC brigade and associated units to Germany: freezing weather. And then some. Over the three-week exercise, McIntosh said soldiers endured weather ranging from minus-6 degrees and five inches of snow to 60 degrees with flooding and 40- to 50-knot winds. To haul the gear they needed alongside the 1,100 air assault troops and their accompanying units, the 101st called on the Air Force's 61st Airlift Squadron out of Little Rock, Arkansas, McIntosh said. That's because, much like a real-world event, the 101st will rely on joint and partner forces and is likely going to need to resupply and reinforce by air only, the colonel said. Beyond the big platforms, the division started 3D printing and experimenting with new drones ahead of the event, ultimately building and flying 105 unit-made drones during the exercise. Those flights, however, weren't without their hiccups. The colonel estimated that eight to 12 of the drones crashed at some point but were operational and back in the fight within 24 hours, after some quick maintenance. Soldiers are using lessons learned from the drone printing and employment to build a better, 2.0 version of their 'Eagle' drone for the next exercise, McIntosh said. That work will focus on the division's 1st Brigade, which is set for a Joint Readiness Training Center rotation at Fort Johnson, Louisiana, in May, according to McIntosh.
