BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. -- Soldiers of the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division combined forces with Airmen of the 96th Bomb Squadron for Pegasus Forge 5.5, a training event that took place at Fort Hood, Texas.
The event spanned 45 days in the field leading up to the last full day filled with live fire coordination exercises.
“We were fortunate enough to have a training area like here at Fort Hood, that allows us to kind of synchronize these events and give the brigade that repetition or rigor needed to be ready in the future,” said U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jeff Broadwater, Commanding General of the 1st Cav. Div.
The exercise offered demonstrations of live-fire synchronization across assets from both the Air Force and Army. The Air Force Tactical Air Control Party specialists stationed at Fort Hood coordinated strikes on a simulated enemy between the 96th BS and 1st Cav. Div.
“What they have done out here, they’ll never experience again,” said U.S Army Col. Michael D. Schoenfeldt, 1st ABCT Commander. “It will be years before these Soldiers are part of a training event that includes B-52H Stratofortress aircraft, M270 multiple launch rocket systems and M109 paladins, all coming together and firing in concert.”
The B-52 hasn’t dropped live munitions at Fort Hood in more than 10 years. This lapse in time warranted a month-long culmination of coordination to be able to set up the realistic exercise for real-life joint environments.
“We always get great support from everybody here at Fort Hood,” Broadwater said. “We have had a lot of the division support out here providing what we call observer coach trainers. We had [Airmen] from Barksdale here. We also had the rocket battery from a battalion out of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, as well as some other units on post to synchronize this training event.”
After Barksdale’s aircraft demonstrated their show of force, they returned home with more experience under their belt.
“Wherever we go, it doesn’t matter where the U.S. sends us,” Schoenfeldt said. “We’ve trained them and taken care of them, and they are ready to defend our nation.”