Northern Strike, a Department of Defense’s military reserve training program, is returning to Camp Grayling this August with innovative technologies used in exercises and the largest number of international partners.
Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Anderson with Northern Strike said the program’s goal is to further improve the Unites States’ defense capabilities and build readiness for service members and the equipment.
International partners play an important role during this training period. This year, there are close to 1,000 service members from nine countries such as Latvia, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil, Anderson said.
“In times of war, we need to make sure that our doctrine and our tactics, techniques and procedures are in line with our partner nations,” Anderson said. “For the last 30-40 years, every time we go in and conduct a contingency operation, it's usually joint or a coalition, so it's not just the United States military going in it alone.”
For example, Anderson said a long-time Michigan National Guard partner has been Latvia because it was trying to rebuild its military after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Another country that has been actively participating in Northern Strike is the UK.
Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Hardy is from York and serves in the First United Kingdom Division as a senior planning officer.
He heard about good experiences that British soldiers had when training across various places in the U.S. and thought that Northern Strike can provide engagement between the American and British soldiers and teach interoperability.
“It's us being able to say how we do it, being able to do a compare and contrast,” Hardy said. “It's not about better or worse. It's just if we are deploying somewhere again, at least we've got a start point of understanding between us that we can build on.”
Last year he planned to participate at Northern Strike with 100 British soldiers, and this year the number has increased to 150. In total, he said there are 300 British service members.
Some of Hardy’s units are logisticians, artillery, military intelligence and royal military police.
“There is just a definite need to understand how different militaries work, because the likelihood is that we are going to work together in some way or form in the future and better to find that out all now, even at the lowest level where, is that sergeant that you're conversing with, do they do policing in the same way that you do?” Hardy said.
In the training, Northern Strike implements new technologies as well such as unmanned aerial systems (UAS), also known as drones. There are 50 service members taking a new week-long course on how to counter drone attacks.
Major Tucker Palmatier, cyber specialist with the U.S. Army, said Northern Strike has a mission to train soldiers on these new systems, but the current program has just started after a pilot launch last year.
He said Northern Strike generals saw the need for soldiers to learn how to protect themselves from those drones because they’re relatively inexpensive for enemy forces to buy and are effective in dropping grenades or other weapons.
First, the generals saw soldiers in Syria, Iraq and the terrorist group ISIS attack American friendly forces with drones around eight years ago.
With time, drone technologies advanced but their threat stays the same, Palmatier said.
“It is very low expense UASs that are able to deliver an explosive package to our friendly forces and cause damage at a very low cost, and as a result they're very difficult to defend against,” he said.
The majority of the Northern Strike’s drone training happens in classrooms, Palmatier said, and the soldiers practice with simulated systems to learn how to take down the drones.
This and other training at Northern Strike are taking place through Aug. 16 in Camp Grayling and other exercise centers across Michigan.
