Immediate Response 04
Soldiers and civilians from the Combined Maneuver Training Center at Hohenfels, Germany, deployed to Poland in September 2004 to help with the combined exercise Immediate Response 04. Nearly 30 trainers deployed from Germany to Wedrzyn Training Area to engage Polish and American paratroopers in challenging training scenarios, while testing the deployability of their own systems. They employed almost 100 local Polish residents as civilians on the battlefield and Polish military augmented opposition forces.
The annual, bilateral security cooperation exercise is conducted between US, NATO and coalition partners, to focus on interoperability training and theater security cooperation. Immediate Response's main objective was to improve training and to participate in joint coalition operations. Interoperability with NATO forces is of paramount importance. It supports U.S. Army, Europe's theater engagement program, which increased NATO interoperability through combined exercises among partner nations.
All were outfitted with the Deployable Instrumentation System, Europe, equipment. The DISE equipment, a GPS-based tracking system for weapons, Soldiers, and vehicles on the battlefield, was used in after-action reports, but could also be viewed in near-real-time, with Soldiers represented by blue circles, OPFOR by red squares, and civilians on the battlefield by green squares. The system can be reviewed in many different speeds and from any angle. It provides feedback tools for Soldiers and leaders. Today's Soldier has so many types of missions to train for, as the demands on a Soldier increase, the training must also increase to meet those demands. The feedback on the ground during the action is also vastly more sophisticated than the buzzer of death associated with MILES gear. The vest has 17 different verbal cues to give the Soldier. Indications include injuries to legs, abdomen, arms, and head, including an estimated life expectancy.
Receiving medical care returns the soldier to action. If injured in ways that would prevent use of a weapon, that Soldier cannot fire the weapon, but a teammate can pick up the weapon and utilize it. The flash and sound from the blank ammunition allows the laser to fire, so load and usage of ammo is realistic. The system can also handle much more than a squad. It is scalable and deployable, and have had up to 1,000 people in the system at one time, and more than 500 for 24 straight hours.
The MOUT training demonstrates that assaulting the town without regard to the consequences of collateral damage doesn't work. It's not running around in the woods. Polish civilians have had the opportunity to observe the care the Army takes in minimizing damage to civilian property, and innocent people.
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