-
The US military is shifting its focus toward the Indo-Pacific region amid competition with China.
-
That shift means US troops are doing more training to deal with conditions specific to that region.
-
This spring, Air Force commandos trained in one of the region’s toughest environments: the jungle.
Georgia-based Air Force special operators deployed to the Pacific this spring for jungle-warfare training.
Such training is nothing new for US troops, but this exercise comes as the US military is shifting its focus a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific region — where US conventional and special-operations forces may find themselves up against a well-armed enemy in a dense, sweltering jungle.
Air Force Special Operations Command commandos from the 38th Rescue Squadron based at Moody Air Force Base spent almost a month between March and April in Hawaii to hone their jungle-warfare skills.
As pararescuemen, these commandos focused their training on tracking personnel in the jungle and on avoiding being tracked themselves, while also testing their tactics, techniques, and procedures in other skill sets.
In a press release, Lt. Col. Michael Vins, the squadron’s commanding officer, noted that the jungle is a “very unforgiving environment” and that US special operators “need to be ready for that kind of environment by training there, understanding how to survive there.”
As US special operators found in World War II and Vietnam, the jungle is probably one of the hardest places to fight. Visibility is limited — sometimes to just a few yards — and the surroundings are rife with dangers, including poisonous plants and lethal animals, that can put troops out of commission pretty quickly.
US troops have had “to take a step back” from what worked in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan and figure out what works in the jungle, “which is way more difficult to operate in,” Staff Sgt. Evan Rogowski said in the release.
“It’s pretty unpredictable out here,” Rogowski added. “It can be raining in the morning and then completely sunny in the afternoon, and back to rain. Outside of carrying the proper equipment, there’s not much we can do to control that.”
During the Vietnam War, US special-operations recon teams from the highly secretive Military Assistance Command Vietnam-Studies and Observations Group lived and fought in the jungles of Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam, where they tracked the movements of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops and fought running battles against an often overwhelming enemy.
MACV-SOG still influences modern US special operations, but many of the jungle-warfare skills those Vietnam-era operators developed have atrophied.
“As highly trained special warfare operators, we’re always thinking about modern-day warfare and high-tech weapon systems, but something so primitive like grenades that roll out of bamboo if you kick the wrong stick over is enough to wipe us all out,” Staff Sgt. Evan Orth said in the release.
The importance of fundamental combat skills and small-unit tactics are constants wherever troops find themselves, but what troops need to do to properly apply them can change radically in different locations.
Orth added that by training in the jungle, the pararescuemen would be “more aware of threats” that they wouldn’t otherwise expect.
Tracking people in the jungle has dual importance for pararescumen and other special operators. Whether they are pursuing an enemy or trying to rescue a friendly, the principles are the…