U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) has implemented another way to build capacity with its European partner forces, holding the first Combined Forces Land Component Commanders’ (CFLCC) Seminar taught in Europe.
The July 23-27 event at Grafenwoehr Training Area in Germany took training to the strategic level by bringing together senior officers to share experiences and build relationships while learning the techniques of leading and sustaining a combined land force component in a joint task force environment.
The participants–23 officers from the United States and 15 European nations–were primarily brigadier generals and senior colonels being primed for promotion or top-level leadership positions within their nations’ forces, the command said in a release. Their diversity reflects the diversity of the coalitions that comprise today’s land component commands.
The point for USAREUR is to build a level of understanding with senior officers of “how CFLCC needs to operate in the event we had to form one, and if they were part of that, what role would that be and what some of critical issues would be that CFLCC would face, so they gain a more complete understanding of the processes, challenges, and intent,” an officer said.
Networking is also a major part of any training event, and the command’s ongoing training events for young officers and enlisted leaders builds trust and understanding as well as reinforcing concepts between forces over time as they move up in grade. USAREUR has some sort of training event under way every day.
The seminar comprised 20 sessions taught by senior active and retired military and civilian experts representing U.S. and allied land, air and sea forces and other agencies involved in coordinated combat, stability and reconstruction operations.
The sessions spanned the horizon of joint and combined multinational operations, from fundamentals to theater strategic perspectives; air, land and sea battle coordination; command relationships; logistics; special operations; intelligence; cyber warfare; influence and inform operations; working with government and nongovernment agencies; and understanding the political and interagency implications of operations.
USAREUR commander Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling hosted and moderated the seminar.
“Many of these senior leaders have been to Iraq or Afghanistan, and they’ve conducted operations with their forces, but they’ve never built from the beginning a combined land force component commander. We’ve never done that from the beginning of an operation,” he said.
The weeklong event here, based on the CFLCC commander’s seminar for U.S. and partner general officers at the U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., was a first step toward changing that. It rounds out other training events offered here and across USAREUR’s 51 partner nations, and helps grow battlefield capabilities Hertling said were cobbled together at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom just 10 years ago.