XVIII Airborne Corps trains for forcible entry airborne assault

By Spc. A.M. LaVey
XVIII Abn. Corps PAO

	Photo by Tech. Sgt. Sean M. Worrell/Air Force Paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division and XVIII Airborne Corps prepare to board C-17 Globemaster III aircraft at Pope Air Force Base Wednesday. The paratroopers later jumped from the aircraft during a joint forcible entry exercise, which provided them with training on contingency operations.

Paratroopers from the XVIII Airborne Corps completed a joint forcible entry exercise here Friday.

The week-long event, which happens about six times a year at Fort Bragg, provides the XVIII Abn. Corps, its subordinate units and Air Force partners, with a relevant, realistic and constructive training mission to keep the corps mission-ready at all time.

“The purpose of the JFEX is to strengthen our capabilities in an operational environment and is a great opportunity for the brigade combat teams to execute and train,” said Maj. Hugh Perry, a future operations planner with the XVIII Abn. Corps G-3. “It is also when we get to showcase the complexity and relevancy of maintaining a forcible entry capability here at Fort Bragg.”

The XVIII Abn. Corps, as ‘America’s Contingency Corps,’ has a very unique mission.

“The XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg possess a capability that no one else in the Department of Defense possesses,” said Perry. “We have the ability to exercise a forcible entry airborne assault and to command and control that assault at a combined joint task force-level. No one else is equipped and trained to perform this kind of mission as we are and the JFEX is the tool we use to refine that tool set in order to maintain these capabilities.”

While the exercise itself lasts only a week, it takes a little more than a month to plan and the XVIII Abn. Corps is the organization that collects all the pieces of the puzzle and put it all together.

“The XVIII Airborne Corps serves not only as the overall lead effort in the collaborative joint planning process, we also serve as the primary command and control element for the exercise and the scenarios that we develop,” said Perry. “This serves multiple functions: our corps-centric objectives are an attempt to validate the planning standard operation procedure and we are exercising our joint collaborative planning as we are trying to replicate the environment that our paratroopers would be in while deployed.

“We take every JFEX seriously,” Perry added. “It is an opportunity for us to come together with key leaders and determine what it is that we need to maintain and the areas we need to improve — whether it be in planning or execution. In the end, the Corps, brigade combat teams and joint staffs are more prepared to plan and execute future joint forcible exercise in support whatever mission comes our way.”