These are just a few of the things that airborne forces can take and hold until they are relieved by more conventional forces. More likely, though, is something that has not even been imagined yet. This is because the inherent flexibility of airborne forces to rapidly get into an area and take control is very high. This point alone gives the airborne a lot of deterrence value against the bad guys around the world.
The 82nd Way of War: Operation Royal Dragon
By now you are probably wondering just how all of this comes together for the troopers of a brigade task force. Well, to get some idea of just how it does come together, I took the time to observe the largest peacetime airborne exercise since the end of the Second World War, Operation Royal Dragon. Royal Dragon was part of a much larger exercise being run by the U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM), the primary packager of U.S. military forces for overseas operations. Code-named Combined Joint Task Force Exercise ?96 (CJTFEX 96), it was run between April 25th and May 20th, 1996, along the mid-Atlantic seaboard. Over 53,000 personnel were involved, including the carrier battle group of the USS
For the 82nd Airborne, CJTFEX 96 represented the opportunity to run a division-sized drop with roughly the same numbers of troopers that had been planned for the Haitian drop back in 1994. Prior to the Haitian mission, there had been a series of test exercises, known as “Big Drops,” to see if such a mission was even possible with the downsized airlift forces of the time. Now the 82nd would run a simultaneous three-brigade drop for real, albeit in an extremely large exercise. The exercise area for Royal Dragon would be the Fort Bragg training complex west of the main base, and it would be a busy place. All told, over six thousand paratroops would jump from 133 transport aircraft in a series of eight night drops over three separate drop zones. From there, the paratroops would move south for three days of force-on-force ground maneuvers against a series of opposing force (OPFOR) units drawn from the 10th Mountain Division and other units.
Along with the large size of the drops, another interesting feature of Royal Dragon was the inclusion of various international forces. A number of naval vessels from around NATO would join Task Force 950, or act as naval OPFORs. The big foreign unit, though, would be the entire British 5th Parachute Brigade, which would face an OPFOR composed of a battalion of world-famous Gurkhas. More than one of us in the pre-exercise briefing chuckled and wondered just how fair that matchup would be! D-Day for the naval part of the operation would be May 10th, but the big day for the paratroops would be Wednesday, May 15th, 1996.
Since it would be impossible to watch all the action of Royal Dragon, I was teamed with the HHC element of the 1st Brigade of the 82nd, which would have the battle in the middle of the Fort Bragg exercise. 1 st Brigade is based around the 504th PIR, which was Ruben Tucker’s outfit during World War II. In Italy, they became known by their German opponents as “the Devils in Baggy Pants.” Today, they go by the name of the Devil Brigade. In 1996, 1st Brigade was commanded by Colonel Dave Petraeus, U.S.A. Known as “Devil-6” by his friends and on the communications nets, he actually is Dr. David Petraeus, Ph.D. This is because he also carries a doctorate in international relations (from Princeton) in addition to his other intellectual and military achievements. During the summer of 1996, he was ably assisted in this job by Command Sergeant Major Vincent Myers, who was responsible for looking after the welfare and professional development of the enlisted and non-commissioned troopers for Colonel Petraeus.
Facing 1st Brigade during Royal Dragon would be a brigade of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York. The 1st Brigade’s mission would be to land on a training DZ known as Normandy (each Fort Bragg DZ carries the name of a famous airborne battle), establish an airhead to sustain further operations, and then attack south to take a series of road junctions and other objectives. They would have only three days to complete the mission, and every move would be watched and scored by judges from XVIII Airborne Corps and USACOM. Along with 1st Brigade would be the British 5th Paras landing to their west in the big Holland DZ, and another 82nd brigade to their east in the Sicily DZ. All told, it would be the biggest single drop event since D-Day, and quite a show.
Wednesday, May 15th, 1996
I had driven down with my researcher John Gresham to get set for the start of Royal Dragon, but things were already starting to take a nasty turn. The weather was going bad in a hurry, as a result of a cold spring storm that had rolled in from the Atlantic. Nevertheless, the start of Royal Dragon was going ahead despite the heavy rain and fog that had developed. As long as the cloud base stayed above 1,000 feet/305 meters above ground level, the drops would go forward. With this in mind, John and I checked the rain gear in our field packs as we prepared to link up with the HHC of 1st Brigade.
We got our first look at Colonel Petreaus and his men out at the Pope AFB “Green Ramp” that evening. As they prepared to load up onto twenty-eight C-130s (with twenty more for their equipment and vehicles), we headed out to Holland DZ to watch the first of the British drops at 9:00 PM/2100 hours that evening. By that time, the rain had subsided, though the cloud base was only at around 2,000 feet/610 meters above the ground. Along the edge of the DZ were a number of our old press friends, here to cover this largest of exercises. Already, though, CJTFEX 96 had been troubled with problems. The previous Friday, while practicing a night helicopter insertion, an AH-1W Cobra attack helicopter and a CH-46E transport chopper had collided over Camp LeJeune. Over a dozen Marines had died, and the USACOM exercise controllers were taking extra care not to repeat the accident. With 133 transport delivering their troops and cargo in a period of just five hours, the skies over Fort Bragg were going to be busy and full this night.
Precisely at 9:00 PM/2100 hours, the curtain on Royal Dragon went up as flights of USAF C-141Bs swept over Holland DZ, dropping the heavy equipment of the British 5th Para Brigade. Since the entire exercise area was blacked out to simulate real-world combat conditions, Major Mark Wiggins, the 82nd’s Public Affairs Officer (PAO), had lent us sets of PVS-7B night-vision goggles (NVGs) to be able to watch the drop. Through the eerie green readouts of the NVGs, each of the big loads silently sank to the ground under a cluster of cargo parachutes. Then, about ten minutes after the heavy drop, several more waves of C-141s arrived over the battlefield, dumping almost two thousand British Paras onto the Holland DZ. The drop went well with only one serious injury, a spinal and cranial injury to one man whose chute had streamed during the jump, landing him on his head! Amazingly, he survived.
Thursday, May 16th, 1996
In less than an hour, the drops in the Holland and Sicily DZs were completed, and the friendly (“Blue”) forces had linked up and were fighting out of their DZ towards the first objectives. For us, there would now be a three-hour wait for 1st Brigade to make their jump into the Normandy DZ. Unfortunately, the weather began to take a hand. The cloud base kept dropping closer to the exercise minimums, and a heavy fog had settled over the DZ. Visibility was now under 1,000 yards/915 meters, and it was getting hard to see much. Finally, at 1:00 AM/0100 hours, the flights of C-130s began their equipment drops, followed fifteen minutes later by the transports carrying the 1st Brigade troopers. A number of the C-130 had to go around several times to make their drops, and most of the troopers were landing over 1,000 yards/915 meters away from us, down at the South end of the DZ. John and I were to have joined up with Colonel Petraeus at this time, but heavy fog prevented our meeting. After waiting for a
