The Gazette, Colorado Springs June 11, 2012
Fort Carson: Army seeks to change, but not forget
By Jakob Rodgers
As the war in Afghanistan grinds to an end, soldiers find themselves facing a difficult question: How does the Army change the way it fights without forgetting the lessons learned in combat?
Fort Carson soldiers, trying to blend hard-won lessons and new tactics during a training exercise last week, say they’ve found some answers.
“This is our framework to understand the future,” said Col. Joel Tyler, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. “We have to take the experiences that we gained with blood and we have to put that to good use in the future.”
On June 6, soldiers with 1st Brigade’s 1st Squadron of the 66th Armored Regiment trained in the hills on the south end of Fort Carson, firing lasers instead of anti-tank rounds from Abrams tanks as they battled each other in a miles-wide giant game of laser tag.
The drill was one part of the Army’s renewed focus on conventional warfare: Part of a plan designed to refocus the Army into a hybrid force able to take on everything from enemy tanks to a handful of insurgents dotting a rugged mountainside.
But the change has come at a price — most notably, the ability to find solace and relative security behind the walls of a makeshift military base.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers headed to battle from fortified bases or combat outposts. Though attacked at times, the bases provided a safe haven for soldiers to regroup, plan or briefly take their minds from the rigors of war.
Those days appear to be nearing an end.
With the war in Iraq finished and most troops slated to leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the Army is heading back to its roots in “maneuver warfare” — where agile forces stay and fight in the field in lightning-fast combat.
At night, that means soldiers must circle up their tanks and Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicles in similar fashion to the way wagon trains protected themselves in the 1800s across Colorado.
That old style of fighting is leavened by lessons from recent wars. Soldiers must be ready for anything — from mortar fire to angry farmers and troops need to keep their counterinsurgency skills polished.
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Lessons learned
As U.S. soldiers have done countless times in Iraq and Afghanistan, Capt. Pete Erickson walked down to greet the role players acting as angry farmers and quickly singled out the group’s leader, an Army major dressed in Afghan garb.
Erickson would rather have been preparing for the next day’s training mission on the south side of the post’s massive training range.
He wanted to be sifting through battle plans for the platoons of Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles under his watch. Instead he frowned and confronted this mob of angry farmers unswayed by .50-caliber guns pointed in their direction.
The training scenario is meant to hit close to reality.
Erickson’s tanks apparently tore up the villagers’ roads, said Maj. Steve Kitchens, who planned the exercise with the 1st Brigade’s 1st Special Troops Battalion.
The tank tracks meant farmers couldn’t get goods to the market, Kitchens said.
And in a twist straight from the villages of Afghanistan, the simulated farmers demanded cash that “a previous Army captain” promised months earlier.
A pipe in his hand, the farmer — portrayed by Kitchens — offered Erickson a puff. The captain, though, turned it down, recalling sour memories of smoking in his youth.
The farmer went back to puffing on the pipe before airing his grievances.
“Do you see my wheelbarrow? Flat tire.” the farmer said. “You come make these problems for us and we don’t understand.”
“It’s never on purpose,” Erickson said.
The smell of tobacco filled the air as Erickson began discussing the tank tracks that have rutted the roads near Atropian Springs, a fictional city that was a focal point of training for Fort Carson soldiers last week.
The exercise is similar to what these soldiers could face if deployed overseas — an large-scale conflict requiring armored equipment as well as the social skills to win over the local population.
Military observers see the Army learning from past miscues by incorporating counterinsurgency measures into its training.
In Iraq, U.S. troops steamrolled Saddam Hussein’s forces en route to overthrowing the regime. Soldiers with Fort Carson’s 1st Brigade are credited with apprehending Hussein.
But the rebuilding the nation proved a more painful process than originally expected — a sign, say experts, that the Army forgot lessons learned in Vietnam.
“There was a lot of reinventing the wheel,” said Joseph Trevithick, a research associate with Globalsecurity.org. “It became clear that a lot of the old lessons that had been learned but not ingrained into the institutional memory came back to the fore.”
•••
‘The keyword is patience’
The conversation dragged on, while shouts from the crowd a few dozen yards away occasionally cut in.
For Erickson, the problem boiled down to a few points. He was sent to the fictional farmer’s country to help the farmer’s government root out “bad guys” who ultimately only want to take over the government and oppress the country’s people.
At times, the cultural differences appeared stark. But Erickson pressed on, asking the farmer to be on the lookout for insurgents and reporting any that he sees.
The farmer countered that the last captain in this land made promises for money that never arrived.
Erickson leaned forward.
“The end of the day, the keyword is patience,” Erickson said.
“Nothing has changed,” the farmer countered. “What do you expect my wife to say?”
“Do you want $3? Or a long, fruitful life together?” Erickson asked.
Kitchens, posing as the farmer, pondered this. Several minutes later, the two stood up and walked away with smiles.
The encounter went well. The captain — though perturbed that he had to stop planning for the morning’s engagement with enemy forces — quelled a minor disturbance and possibly gained a new ally.
Kitchens offered Erickson a few morsels of advice. His biggest concern: Don’t run out to meet every farmer that walks up to his tank.
First send a lieutenant. Then greet the farmer after a few minutes — a subtle but effective move that the captain can use to better demonstrate his power.
The captain nodded.
“That’s a fine line, right?” Kitchens said. “You are a commander and you’re a diplomat.”
© Copyright 2012, Freedom Communications
