Information from those engagements drove the training and resulting missions, eventually countering a simulated invasion by hostile forces from neighboring nations. They monitored simulated economic and political situations in each “nation” through simulated newscasts and media engagements, and mirrored responses to them with procedures and operations that would be used during actual deployments. Exercise participants - mostly made up of Special Forces ODAs, or operational detachment alpha teams, the basic SF tactical element - assimilated into West Virginia communities in two simulated nations and met with actual local government officials, law enforcement and emergency services personnel. Many of those mission sets were tied together throughout the training scenario. “It’s designed to be very broad because it includes hybrid threats, it includes security force assistance and doing not only counterinsurgency and unconventional warfare, but also doing foreign internal defense.” “Irregular warfare is actually a difficult term to describe because there’s no doctrinal for irregular warfare,” said an operations sergeant major with the 19th SFG who oversaw one of the exercise’s training lanes. Training scenarios focused on core Special Forces mission sets, including working with foreign forces, counterinsurgency operations and irregular warfare. The exercise included more than 420 troops, primarily with the 19th Special Forces Group headquartered in the Utah Army National Guard, and allies and partners from 16 nations. Located deep in the West Virginia hills, the launcher site and the attack were part of the culminating exercise for one training lane in exercise Ridge Runner, a two-week special operations training exercise hosted by the West Virginia National Guard and the Irregular Warfare Center. But as the wind gusted again, Soldiers with the 19th Special Forces Group suddenly appeared from the woods in a coordinated assault to seize control of the site. Soldiers went about their duties at a rocket launcher site on a hillside clearing in an otherwise thickly forested area. – The wind danced through the trees as pewter-colored clouds hinted at heavy rain.
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