|
Col. Oscar Hall (left), U.S. Army AlaskaÕs headquarters chief of operations, and Col. Mark Blair, U.S. Army AlaskaÕs EECP chief of operations, stands with Col. Hiroyuki Watabe, of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force. Japan and the U.S. played out an annual war game where the U.S. helps defend Japan from invasion.
Star Photo by Jill Fankhauser
|
In a warehouse on Fort Richardson, U.S. Army Alaska and the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force practiced war game scenarios last week. It was a test for Army Alaska — and the first opportunity to try its mobile headquarters, called the Early Entry Command Post, on an international scale.
“The U.S. Army Pacific plans and executes a scenario that we decide on together with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces,” said Col. Mark Blair, EECP Chief of Operations.
Since 1982 the U.S. Army and Japan have joined together annually in a bilateral exercise called Yama Sakura (translation means mountain cherry blossom).
Typically, the U.S. Army Pacific manages this exercise in Hawaii. But since the Army recently developed the EECP in Alaska, a mobile command post that can be sent anywhere in the world, it made sense to set up the game here to test out its capabilities.
“This is a new capability in the Army service component command that the Japanese have never worked with before,” Blair said. “And in this capacity, we have never worked with this either. So it's a new learning experience, a training experience for both of us.”
In a large briefing room inside the warehouse, Army officials sat side-by-side with Japanese officials to play out and analyze war game scenarios.
Representatives from the U.S. Marines, Air Force and Navy, as well as the Virginia National Guard played roles in the Yama Sakura exercise.
Yama Sakura gives the two countries a chance to improve their ability to work together through computer-simulated war scenarios. In the exercise, the U.S. and Japan created a fictitious invading country with fake strategic objectives to invade Japan, a longtime U.S. ally. The U.S. has a security treaty with Japan to help defend the country if needed.
Japan, Blair said, would depend on the U.S. if there were ever an invasion or crisis because their ground force has only 155,000 soldiers, including reserve members, and is a third of the size of the U.S. Army force.
Japan has run Yama Sakura twice a year for the past 28 years, making the 2008 exercise the 55th time they have practiced with the Army and run through threatening scenarios.
The Japan ground force has five regional armies that rotate in and out of the exercise. This year, they are working with the ground force based on Honshu, the main island and home to Tokyo. American and Japanese military officials will not provide details of the exercise or what exactly the scenario involves, but said it usually focuses on an invasion of Japan by external military forces.
Col. Hiroyuki Watabe, a leader in the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, and a few of his personnel were also at Fort Richardson last week participating in the war game scenario. The relationship with the Americans is important to Japan, he said. He said he enjoyed the experience of working alongside American soldiers and has a lot of information take back to the force in Japan.
“From the Japanese side, this is evidence of the Japan-U.S. alliance. We can't defend (Japan) by ourselves, it is necessary to have a U.S. power, their techniques and war fighting experience.”
The Yama Sakura war game tests the limits of language and technology too. It can be tough for computers to talk to each other in different languages and to make strategic decisions when the alphabet characters are foreign, but they are developing bridges to work around the barriers, Blair said.
As for the role of the EECP, where the Army is able to rapidly deploy and establish a headquarters, it has been successful, Blair said. They have been able to provide the command and capabilities that are needed to manage the mobile unit.
The next step is to analyze everything they learned in the war games and apply it to a battle scenario, which will be played out in Japan in December. The EECP will pack up and work the Operational Command Post in Hawaii, where the U.S. Army Pacific is based, and will head overseas to test out the EECP on an international stage.
