In preparation for deployment, 38th Infantry Division soldiers, including from the Indiana National Guard, recently synchronized their assessments, decisions and actions during a recent training at Camp Atterbury.
Approximately 600 National Guardsmen with the division’s headquarters battalion refined their tactics, techniques and procedures during a nine-day exercise in June that tested their proficiencies as they responded, communicated and developed plans and actions to thwart the enemy, according to a news release on the recent training.
“This exercise prepares you like nothing else can,” Maj. Gen. Dan Degelow, the division’s commanding general, said in the release. “This is a learning laboratory. Don’t stop learning, and make your organization better.”
For the division’s soldiers, this year’s warfighter exercise is helping them gear up for their scheduled deployment later this year in support of Operation Spartan Shield, which is a mission to promote peacekeeping and security in the Middle East.
The mission returns many of the unit’s soldiers, who deployed for the same mission in 2019, to the Middle East hot bed with tensions rising throughout the region. In January, an enemy drone attack struck the U.S. base known as Tower 22. Also in December 2023, Houthi rebels stepped up their attacks on ships sailing in the Red Sea.
Warfighter exercises train the command and staff teams in six areas: command and control, movement and maneuver, intelligence, targeting processes, sustainment and protection. The Cyclone soldiers seemed to grasp the importance of the learning experience, officials said.
More than 2,000 troops from Indiana and surrounding states contributed in some way to the division’s exercise and helping its soldiers learn. Those tasks included acting as response cells in the game as higher, adjacent or subordinate units or in the real world helping sustain the troops with fuel, water and food, officials said.
“For it to be a training exercise, there was a lot of action going on,” Staff Sgt. Rachel Hoke, a 38th Infantry Division paralegal, said in the release. “A lot of people communicating really, really well. A lot of learning, a lot of integration and even for myself, being able to see the inside of the exercise, I was able to learn a lot about battle-staff duties.”
The learning process also extended to soldiers who experienced a warfighter exercise for the first time, officials said.
“I would say at first when we first got started was a little bumpy due to inexperience,” Capt. Zachary Beeson, a 38th ID personnel officer, said in the release. “So a lot of people didn’t know what they’re doing their first time. By the end, we were smooth sailing, once people understood their reasoning of what they were doing. I will say most of us are better today than when we first started.”
The soldiers remain postured to strengthen defense relationships and build partner capacity, which will be invaluable in support of Operation Spartan Shield where they can facilitate theater security cooperation activities in key-leader engagements, conferences, and joint and combined exercises, officials said.
