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| Army Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya and Navy Rear Adm. James Hart speak to the press during media day held at U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Warfighting Center. The visit focused on the training provided to all Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa command personnel. Local media had the opportunity to tour the joint operations center that is home to JTF-HOA personnel during the intensive training scenarios. (Click on this USJFCOM Photo by Air Force Staff Sgt. Joe Laws to get a high quality copy of this image) |
Training comes to a close in exercise for Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa
U.S. Joint Forces Command's Joint Warfighting Center concluded its week-long Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa Mission Rehearsal Exercise here today to prepare joint warfighters for deployment to nations across east Africa and Yemen.
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By Robert Pursell
USJFCOM Public Affairs
(SUFFOLK, Va. - Jan. 18, 2007) -- U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) concluded its week-long Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) Mission Rehearsal Exercise at the Joint Warfighting Center today to prepare joint warfighters for deployment.
The mission of the CJTF-HOA is to prevent conflict, promote regional stability and protect coalition interests in east Africa and Yemen through humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, consequence management, and civic action programs.
Army Col. Dan Grymes, director of the joint exercise control group, said the goal of the experiment is to train the joint task force (JTF) to coordinate assets in the region and the key to success is for the nations in the Horn of Africa to allow the JTF to help them.
"The keys to success for them are to use assets of others to accomplish their mission to enable building capacity in all forms whether it's economic, political or military. Since they don't have very many resources, they have to leverage the resources of others."
Army Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, commander of the Joint Warfighting Center and USJFCOM's director of joint training and, said that training a JTF how to manage assets in HOA can help to counter extremism before it develops and increase stability in the region.
"Most of the effort is how to coordinate assets in theater to prevent the fostering of insurgency," he said.
The exercise, also supported by U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM), trained incoming deployable CJTF-HOA headquarters staff by providing realistic scenarios. It also represents an opportunity for personnel to work with each other. Most of the scenarios are taken from real life instances and are recommended by personnel that are already stationed in HOA.
Navy Rear Adm. James Hart, the incoming commander of CJTF-HOA, explained what he thought was the highlight of the training.
"We have not yet ever had the opportunity to work together, so to be able to put folks down in the joint operations center and the intel center and to have them have to work real world problems on a timeline, coordinate with staffs outside of our own, plus internally, has just been really fabulous," he said.
"I feel real comfortable now that we can go over to HOA and, through about a two-week process turnover with the existing staff there, be up and ready to go," said Hart.
Participants included subject matter experts from USCENTCOM and several interagency organizations, including Department of State, and United States Agency for International Development.
Tomorrow, participants will convene to build the final after action report to discuss everything that happened over the course of the exercise. In the coming weeks, CJTF-HOA is scheduled to undergo some more training before being deployed in mid-February.
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