With hot spots on three continents, 1st Armored Division commander Maj. Gen. Stephen Twitty is taking no chances: he’s throwing the kitchen sink at his troops.

That's why the division's massive home-station exercise at Fort Bliss, Texas, in April will include training, developed in-house, to confront a hybrid Islamic State-style threat.

"When you look at the world today, it's so complex. We don't know where our next fight will be; we don't know where our adversaries are," Twitty said in an interview at the AUSA exposition in Washington, D.C. "We need to be able to respond to a myriad of things."

Mainly, Twitty said, he wants to work out his heavy armor units—whose heavy platforms were mothballed while the units were in Afghanistan—outside a counterinsurgency scenario relevant to the last 13 years of warfare.

"We're doing combined arms maneuver to make sure we know how to fight not only from a heavy perspective, but also to the traditional COIN of the last decade," he said.

It's not all theoretical, and Twitty says, the 1st Armored Division hews to the Army's new operating concept, which envisions a force that can tackle multiple small-scale crises simultaneously. The division has an aviation element readying to deploy to Liberia, another element supporting Operation Spartan Shield, the train, advise and assist mission in Kuwait, and part of its division headquarters is training Jordanians to respond to its Syrian refugee problem.

The 2-501 General Support Aviation Battalion will deploy to Liberia this month with between 400 and 500 troops, four HH-60 Pave Hawks, six UH-60 Black Hawks and four CH-47 Chinooks. It will be subordinate to the 101st Airborne Division, ferrying personnel from United States Agency for International Development and other government agencies rendering medical and logistical support to the Ebola response.

Asked about protecting troops from Ebola, Twitty said he would ensure troops receive the proper training.

The division is sending 300 to 400 troops from the 4-501 General Support Aviation Battalion to Kuwait and an unspecified number of AH-64 Apaches to support Army Central.

Upcoming Exercise

Twitty has charged his staff with studying elements of the Islamic State as a hybrid threat, its ability to mass force and melt into the populations and its use of social media. He is asking them how to integrate civil affairs and training indigenous forces.

"I want everything thrown at them to make it tough and realistic so I get some good-quality training," he said.

The division is taking a page from the Army's training centers, to style its own post-counterinsurgency "decisive action" exercise, a return to the days before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a nod to the shrinking defense budgets squeezing the Army's ability to maintain readiness. Twitty said other commanders are emphasizing home station training as well, not for financial reasons, but to emphasize post-COIN scenarios.

The exercise will include a Stryker Brigade, the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, as the rotational force, with a divisional artillery, aviation and sustainment units supporting. As its opposition force, it will employ a unit that has completed a rotation at the National Training Center (NTC), the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division. Twitty noted, "I could put three NTCs inside Fort Bliss."

Though the administration appears reluctant to employ ground troops in the conflict with the Islamic State and the relevance of the heaviest armor platforms is questionable, Twitty defended his large-scale force-on-force exercise.

"We don't have any crystal balls," he said. "If you take a look at what is going on with Russia right now, that could grow. You never know what assets you'll need on the ground to protect American interests." ■

Email: jgould@defensenews.com.

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