The U.S. Army's 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd
Airborne Division will jump into Poland next month in a test of their
ability to bolster NATO's eastern flank in a hurry. It will also be a
test of the ability of their new all-terrain vehicles to get them
quickly out of the drop zone.
Col. Colin Tuley, commander of the 1st BCT, said
the jump over Torun, Poland, by a battalion of about 600 of his
paratroopers was meant to demonstrate the "readiness and deployability"
of the Global Response Force to shore up allies and meet any threat
worldwide on quick notice.
Tuley, a veteran of multiple tours in
Afghanistan and Iraq and the former deputy commander of the 75th Ranger
Regiment, skirted the question of whether the threat in the particular
case of the Swift Response 16 exercise in Poland was Russia.
The goal was to show "really a united front --
for whatever reason," Tuley said in a phone interview from Fort Bragg,
North Carolina, home of the 82nd, with Pentagon reporters.
"It could be to conduct peacekeeping, it could
be how do you respond to heavy immigration challenges in Europe," he
said. "It's really just a symbol of a united front amongst alliances and
their partners."
Tuley's battalion will take off from Fort Bragg and
rig in the air on the 10-hour flight on June 6, the anniversary of the
World War II D-Day landings in Normandy and a hallowed date for the 82nd
Division, which helped liberate France.
The troops will be dropping
with about 10 of their MRZR all-terrain vehicles made by
Minnesota-based Polaris Defense. (MRZR is not an acronym but simply a
designator, said a Polaris spokeswoman.)
The four-seat MRZRs were still a "pilot program"
for the 82nd but were intended to give the paratroopers more mobility
once they hit the ground. "It's a little more robust" than commercial
ATVs, Tuley said.
"These vehicles significantly enhance what would
otherwise be foot mobility," Brig. Gen. Brian Winski, deputy commander
of the 82nd Airborne, told Bloomberg News. "They change the dynamic and
turn what would have been a three-mile per hour operation into a 50-mile
per hour operation."
"Swift Response will demonstrate the allies' ability
to respond to a crisis scenario from staging bases in both Europe and
the U.S. within 18 hours of notification," the Army said in a statement.
The exercise, which will run from May 27 to June 26,
will include more than 5,000 soldiers and airmen from Belgium, France,
Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain
and the United States, and will take place in Poland and Germany.
On the jump into Poland, the 1st BCT troops will be
joined by about 1,000 paratroopers from the British 16 Air Assault
Brigade and the Polish 6th Airborne Brigade. At the same time, the
Europe-based 173rd Airborne Brigade will deploy from staging bases in
Germany to conduct airborne assaults onto training areas in northern
Poland.
The second phase of Swift Response 16 will take place
in Germany at the U.S. Army's Grafenwoehr and Hohenfels Training Areas,
and will include another Joint Forcible Entry airdrop.
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