Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

by Tom Clancy

  Armed with the captured documents, signals intercept information, and scouting reports from the Red force, Petraeus had planned a breakout to the south through a critical road junction near a small DZ known as Campbell’s Crossroads. This was the main defense line of the enemy brigade, and if it was broken through, that would effectively finish their ability to defend against 1st Brigade. The problem was that the crossroads was located between a pair of artillery live-fire impact zones, which would not be used for maneuver that evening when the attack was scheduled. This created a funnel-shaped path that the troopers of the brigade would have to attack down. Petraeus was betting that the data his patrols had collected was accurate, and that he could concentrate enough firepower to kill the heavy enemy forces concentrated at the junction. Just to make sure that he did, General Crocker had assigned him the RRC from the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized), which had been delivered that afternoon. Along with a company of M551 Sheridans (they still were in service at this time), Devil-6 was planning a hot time for the 10th Mountain troops later that evening.

  Petraeus also hit upon an idea to decoy further enemy forces away from his attacking units. As related earlier, the Red force had already found the 1st Brigade TOC, and had attacked it with a small force of infantry and an attached infantry platoon. Hoping that they would do it again in greater strength, he had the HHC dig deep fighting positions and lay a heavy tangle of barrier wire to stop the expected assault. He then shifted primary control of the brigade’s operations to a force of a half-dozen HMMWVs configured as a mobile TOC, and moved them to the top of a deserted hill. From there, he would control the fight from the front seat of a Hummer with a couple of radios and a plastic-covered 1:50,000 scale map from DMA. It would be little different from how Ruben Tucker had done it during Market Garden over a half century ago.

  Around 10:00 PM, the two attacking battalions headed to the line of departure with their supporting armor, and the brigade’s force of artillery and attack helicopters began a heavy simulated bombardment of the Red force positions around the Campbell DZ crossroads. Now we would just have to wait and see what happened.

  Friday, May 17th, 1996

  By midnight, it was clear that 1st Brigade had made excellent progress towards their objective of taking the crossroads. The artillery strikes had been scored highly effective against the enemy positions, and now the brigade’s force of OH-58D Kiowa Warriors was working over what was left of the enemy armor and guns with simulated Hellfire missiles. This still left a battalion-sized blocking force in front of the crossroads, and this would require some deft maneuvering to defeat. The narrow passage between the two impact zones made for very little maneuvering room, though the darkness helped shield the brigade’s lead infantry elements as they moved south. At the same time, the Red forces staged a heavy attack on the Brigade TOC, just as Petraeus had planned for. You could see the smile on the face of Devil-6 as he heard his HHC staff fight for their simulated lives, and win a tough fight against the intruding Red force infantry. The rest of the fight would take hours to finish, since the brigade’s infantry was legging it to their objectives. As a heavy fog closed over the hilltop TOC, we laid our ponchos down and tried to grab a few hours of sleep until dawn.

  By the time the sun began the burn away the fog, we were up and checking the status of the fight. Colonel Petraeus and his staff were tired but happy. The lead units had taken the crossroads, after some heavy fighting and the armor and follow-on two battalions were fanning out from the bottom of the funnel-shaped exit towards the southern boundary road, the final stop line for the brigade. Before sundown on this Friday, they would achieve their goals, completely victorious against the tough opposition of the 10th Mountain’s brigade.

  Things had not been so easy for the Brits over in the western part of the exercise area, though. Their Gurkha OPFOR opponents had proven extremely tough, and had even driven them off of part of the Holland DZ at one point! It would take the 5th Paras until the end of the exercise on Saturday afternoon to achieve all of their objectives, though they would eventually succeed.

  A map of Operation Royal Dragon in May 1997 at Fort Bragg, NC.

  JACK RYAN ENTERPRISES, LTD.,BY LAURA ALPHER

  When the “ENDEX Time” signal was issued the next day, Royal Dragon was being judged an unqualified success by the USACOM exercise directors. The Blue forces had been faced with bad weather and a number of difficult “real world” challenges, which they had overcome. All involved, including the OPFOR units, had gotten a great week of time in the field, with over four days of simulated combat time. Best of all, the 82nd had gotten to practice their trade on a massive scale, proving the continued viability of division-sized drops in the 1990s. It was both fun and informative to watch, and a great way to learn the trade of the airborne.

  Colonel Petraeus and his troopers would need the practice, because they would shortly be headed into the eighteen-week cycle that is the core of the brigade lifestyle in the 82nd. We’ll explore this more in the next chapter. For now, though, I hope that our little narrative of Royal Dragon has taught you a bit about how the airborne does their deadly and vital job.

  Division Ready Brigade: Eighteen Weeks in the Cycle

  When there are problems in the world, the phone always rings first at Fort Bragg.

  —Major Mark Wiggins, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs Officer

  For the airborne troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division, trouble always seems to come in the dark of night. This time was no exception. Two days earlier, on August 6th, 1990, at 2300 hours/11:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, the division had received a “Red Line” or “Red X-Ray” message. This was to inform them that they had been placed on alert for a possible deployment to Saudi Arabia in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait a few days earlier. The next day, less than eighteen hours after the arrival of the alert message, the first units of the 82nd, a battalion of the division’s 2nd Brigade (325th Airborne Infantry Regiment), were ready to roll. All they needed was an order to go. That came quickly enough.

  On the other side of the world, an American delegation of top-ranking Administration and military leaders were briefing members of the Saudi Royal family, including King Fahd.50 Viewgraphs were flipped, satellite photos were shown, ideas and offers were put forward. Then, after just a few minutes of deep thought, a profound decision was reached. U.S. military forces were to be invited to the Kingdom to defend against a possible Iraqi invasion, and to help begin the process of freeing Kuwait from the hold of Saddam Hussein. Secretary Cheney and General Schwarzkopf made phone calls home to the U.S., and the great deployment was on.

  However, Saddam’s forces were already on the ground, just a few miles/kilometers from the Saudi Arabian border and the oil fields that would clearly be the target of any invasion. The nearest U.S. forces designed for this kind of deployment were over 8,000 miles/12,850 kilometers away. The key would be who could hold control of a handful of air bases and ports in northern Saudi Arabia through which virtually all of the Coalition forces would flow in the next six months. Clearly, if Iraq had any sort of ambition for taking a piece of Saudi Arabia, they had a huge head start over the U.S. forces that would be defending against an invasion.

  The United States and their allies had something just as important: forces that were more agile and mobile than anything Iraq has ever had. Back at Fort Bragg, in the Corps Marshaling Area (CMA, a sealed compound where units can prepare their equipment and themselves for a combat deployment), the units of the 82nd’s 2nd Brigade were all set to answer the call when it came. Within minutes, the first units boarded buses for the short ride over to the Pope AFB Green Ramp. There, a number of chartered jumbo jets waited to take them on the trip to the airfield at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Just eighteen hours later, the first of the chartered jets touched down, and were personally guided to a revetment. Then, in a crush of newspaper and television personnel, the first ground troops strode off the jet and headed off to an assembly area.

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p; Within just a few hours of landing, they would be digging in north of Dhahran, holding the line for what would eventually be a flood of a half-million personnel from America. For the next few days, they would be the only U.S. ground forces in the Kingdom. It was a scary time. The 2nd Brigade had arrived with only three days’ rations (MREs, of course!), no heavy armor, and only whatever ammunition they could carry on their backs. The temperatures went up to 130° F/54.4° C, forcing the troopers to drink over eight gallons/thirty liters of fluids each day. Three Republican Guards Divisions were only 60 miles/100 kilometers away, and the paratroops wryly joked that if the Iraqis came south, they would be little more than “speed bumps”!

  However, the Iraqis did not come on August 8th, 1990. Their reasons remain perhaps the greatest “what if” of that entire episode in the Persian Gulf. Was it that they had actually run out of supplies, and needed time to refit and resupply? Or was an invasion ever one of Saddam’s goals? We may never know the truth for sure. However, one thing is certain. Had the Iraqis come south, they would have been engaging American and other Coalition soldiers defending the soil of a nation that had done them no harm. It would have happened in full view of the world press, causing what became known as the “CNN effect” six months earlier than it eventually did.

  Troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division trudge into the Saudi Arabian desert (the rear trooper is carrying a mortar base plate) north of Dhahran. During Operation Desert Storm the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne was the first U.S. ground unit to reach the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.

  OFFICIAL U.S. ARMY PHOTO

  In the end, though, those Republican Guards divisions stayed on their side of the border, where they would have to wait six more months to be chopped up by Chuck Horner’s airmen and the armored troopers and attack helicopters of Fred Franks’s VII Corps. The 82nd Airborne would be there too, though playing a relatively minor role in the actual fighting. But during those heart-stopping days in August of 1990, the “speed bumps” of the 2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division were all that stood between Iraq and control of 70 percent of the world’s known oil reserves.

  No matter how you view the results of the 1990/1991 military actions in the Persian Gulf, one thing is certain. The rapid deployment of the 82nd’s first units to Dhahran was a defining moment in the crisis. It showed the world, especially Iraq, that America was serious about its commitment to keeping Iraq in check. It also showed that the U.S. was capable of rapidly putting ground forces into the theater, albeit ones with limited weapons and supplies. These images had a heartening effect on our allies, and probably caused a pause or two in places like Baghdad, Amman, and Tripoli. Quite simply, the rapid deployment of those first airborne troopers may have made Saddam blink. Once again, the 82nd had likely deterred aggression against an ally, though perhaps only by a narrow margin.

  In the Persian Gulf, the narrow margin was their deployment speed. The ability of the 82nd to go from a cold start to having the first combat unit in the air in under eighteen hours is their vital edge. The famous Confederate cavalry leader General Nathan Bedford Forrest is supposed to have said that victory goes to the combatant “that gets there firstest with the mostest.” Today, the 82nd is America’s living embodiment of this classic concept. When the All-Americans go off to a crisis, they do so leaner, meaner, and faster than almost any other unit in the U.S. military. They do pay a price for their strategic mobility in terms of firepower and sustainability, but the payoff is the ability to beat the bad guys into a crisis zone. In a time when appearances (at least on television) are frequently more important than reality, getting there first can be as important as victory itself. Sometimes, it is victory!

  Having shown you how the 82nd is constructed as well as how it gets to war, it is time to finally show you how the whole concept comes together: the Division Ready Brigade and the eighteen-week/eighteen-hour operational cycles that are the cornerstones. When you are finished, I think you will understand why the 82nd is so respected by our allies, and feared by our enemies.

  Division Ready Brigade: The 82nd Concept of Operations

  To understand the 82nd Airborne Division’s rapid ability to deploy, you need to accept a few little rules that might be considered the “fine print” of airborne warfare. First, you do not normally move an entire airborne division (over 16,000 personnel) all at once. It can be done, but it takes days of planning and preparation, something usually lacking in a crisis situation. The next point is that since you probably will not have days, but just hours to react to a fast-breaking situation, you need to have systems and organizations in place that can move the largest and most balanced combat units possible. Finally, you cannot just dump men and equipment into the middle of nowhere, and then not support them with supplies, replacements, and reinforcements. Americans have a habit of wanting their troops to come home in something other than body bags, so you have to have a way of getting them back. All of these are huge problems. Huge, but manageable. Fortunately for America, Bill Lee anticipated most of these problems over a half century ago, and the Army and Air Force has kept things going since then.

  These points made, let’s make a few assumptions. First, the National Command Authorities will give you just eighteen hours to go from a cold start to the first battalion task force (roughly a third of an airborne brigade) being “chuted ups” loaded and wheels-up, flying to their assigned objective area. Second, those same command authorities will want additional units making up the rest of the brigade task force to follow in the shortest time possible. Finally, the national leadership somehow will find air and logistical bases close enough to the deployment area to support the airborne forces, as well as some way to get them home. A lot of assumptions, but ones that are considered unbreakable by airborne planners.

  The key to making all this happen is a rotation schedule based around something called the Division Ready Brigade (DRB). The idea is this: Each of the division’s three brigades spends six weeks on a round-the-clock alert status, as the designated unit that is ready to go on deployment. Then, within each DRB, the battalions have their own rotation within the six-week alert period. At any time, a single battalion is assigned as the Division Ready Force-1 (DRF-1, the battalion task force I described earlier), and is fully packed and primed to deploy within the prescribed eighteen-hour time limit.

  You may think that the ability to put only 1/9th of a division into the air at one time sounds trivial, but you need to remember a couple of things. First, that battalion task force is a powerful unit that can sustain itself for a surprising amount of time in the field, especially if it is dropping into an area away from the core of enemy strength and with surprise. Secondly, additional DRF-sized units will be arriving shortly if required, sometimes only hours after the first one. Other brigade task forces can also be on their way within a day or two of the first being landed. The bottom line of this is that an international bully with ambition could have an entire 3,500-man airborne brigade in his backyard before a day goes by. Manuel Noriega found this little lesson out the hard way back in 1989.

  By now you may be wondering what the other two brigades of the 82nd are doing while this one brigade is on alert status (called DRB-1 by the 82nd leadership). Well, they are usually either recovering from having just been the DRB (called DRB-3 status), or getting ready to be the DRB (called DRB-2). This means that the entire 82nd Airborne Division is on a continuous eighteen-week cycle. A cycle that has been continuously run since the end of the Vietnam War, with the exception of the period the entire division spent deployed to Southwest Asia for Desert Shield and Desert Storm. As might be imagined, the lives of those assigned to duty with the 82nd are molded around this cycle, which breaks down like this:• DRB-1 (Six Weeks): The brigade has one battalion on a continuous two-hour recall status with the other two on five- and six-hour status respectively. This means that every trooper must be able to be rapidly contacted and able to return to Fort Bragg. When on DRB-1, th
e brigade is able to “push” the DRF into the air within eighteen hours, and get ready to send additional units over the next few days.

  • DRB-2 (Six Weeks): The brigade is in a six-week training period getting ready to go on DRB-1 status. In addition, in the case of a multi-brigade deployment, the brigade on DRB-2 would be the second to go. Also, each year while on DRB-2 status, the brigade is deployed to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana, to sharpen its fighting skills.

  • DRB-3 (Six Weeks): This is where a brigade goes right after it finishes DRB-1. Called the “Support Cycle,” this is the time when troopers take some leave, and get to know their families again. It also is when new replacements rotate into the brigade, as well as a good time for experienced troopers to go to one of the many service schools necessary for keeping them sharp, as well as promotable. However, in the event of an actual deployment by the DRB-1 brigade, the DRB-3 brigade is assigned the job of being the “push” unit. This means that they will pack parachutes, service and load equipment, or do anything else necessary to get the other two brigades ready to head off to war.