Among the events was a fire support coordination exercise, which saw Ranger platoons maneuver downrange and integrate assets such as mortars, artillery and little bird helicopters.
"It teaches us how to not only synchronize our movements, but also bring those assets into the fight," said Capt. Adam Brown, a platoon leader for 1st Platoon, A Company. "Part of our job as tasked by (the chief of staff of the Army) is joint special operations, so we're doing that using elements within the Army outside of our unit and we also have other elements such as our Air Force joint terminal attack controllers that are attached to us that we're integrating into our training as well. That helps us with the special operations raids we're tasked with and forcible entry operations."
During the exercise, three Ranger elements moved on multiple targets and called in fire support from the helicopters along the way, much like they would in real-world combat.
"This can be used under almost any scenario a Ranger platoon might find itself in," Brown said. "Even if it's not the particular aircraft or assets that we've seen today, it's the entire idea of fire and maneuver. We're setting conditions, whether it is through organic assets that the platoon owns like our machine guns or inorganic assets such as Army combat aviation or fixed-wing assets from the Air Force or Navy. This gives us our ability to knock out enemies in depth and allows my guys to get as close as possible to the objective in order to finish the fight."
The key to the fire support coordination exercise was effective communication, something the Rangers said they were grateful to be working on in a training environment.
"There's always going to be little hiccups anytime you have something you really need to work on," said Capt. Shawn Papadinec, a fire support officer for A Company. "But, we were able to address those here instead of when we might really need these skills downrange in another country. ... There's a whole lot of talk that's involved, from us at the company level down to the platoon level and also with other players that work with us as we complete the mission."
Brown said there were some issues, but that his platoon saw drastic improvement from the exercise's dry run to its live fire.
"There are always issues with communication," he said. "Our radios don't always work perfectly. I've got a new radio telephone operator, so we have to work through some kinks there. Then, there's the forward observer and a new Air Force joint terminal attack controller.
"So, on a human level, we just have to figure out how to communicate with each other in order to get the fires exactly where they need to be. Small things like that definitely got worked through, so there was a huge improvement from our dry iteration to our live iteration."
The fires support coordination exercise was just one part of the overall multilateral training, which will culminate with a forcible entry exercise.
Brown said the skills used during multilateral training need to be brushed up on periodically.
"Everything we do needs to be touched on, and the less and less you touch something, the more it atrophies," Brown said. "So, by accessing these skills at least once a year, it helps to make sure it stays fresh. ... If (Rangers are) only seeing these things two or three times in a decade, then they're not getting trained properly and we're losing proficiency, which is absolutely unacceptable in this unit."
http://www.army.mil/article/141419/3rd_Battalion__75th_Ranger_Regiment_conducts_annual_multilateral_training/
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