Early one morning this month, 864 Army paratroopers boarded a C-17 transport plane at a base in Alaska and departed for the Great Power War exercise between three volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Only 492 people passed. Some C-17s had problems with their doors, forcing them to land early. Some of the paratroopers suffered sprained ankles and head injuries. The 19-year-old private then immediately began to fall without the chute opening.
On the other side of the battlefield, cries of “pull out the reserves” can be heard before the young private collapses to the ground, and medics rush to treat him. The horrifying scene and its aftermath encapsulate every jumper’s worst nightmare.
However, Pvt. Private Eric Partida’s fall from 1,200 feet is a harsh reality check for the U.S. Army and hundreds of thousands of young men and women as they transform for more wars, including potential conflict with China. Ta.
The Pentagon calls this a great power war, and the stakes will increase exponentially. If that happens, the world’s two most powerful militaries (both nuclear powers) could come into direct conflict, potentially involving other nuclear adversaries such as North Korea and Russia. The death toll for U.S. soldiers could exceed the casualties of America’s deadliest conflict.
Such wars will be fought on land, sea, air, and space. So the Army is training to do just that.
Forget about Marines who can go anywhere quickly because they travel light. Or a navy that effectively exists in the Pacific. These services were heavily active in the Pacific during World War II, and planning for conflicts in Asia is in their DNA.
But now, as war with China becomes more likely, the large and unwieldy Army is reinventing itself after two decades of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Unlike the Taliban and other insurgent groups, China will have satellites that can see military formations from the air. The Army essentially has to learn how to fly under the radar.
To stress test the Army’s ability to rapidly deploy and fight in the Pacific Islands, soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division, along with Japanese, Australian, Indonesian and other partner forces, rappelled into jungle canyons and climbed humid climbs. went. gear.
At Pearl Harbor, about 45 miles away, the crews of army transport ships were devising different ways to transport military equipment and troops needed during the Pacific War.
And not far from Oahu’s North Shore, soldiers are trying to disguise a multi-vehicle command and control unit with big-screen computer stations, almost indistinguishable from the deep green forest. Ta.
Former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have outlined vastly different approaches to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The two countries’ approaches to the Middle East turmoil are also expected to differ, at least rhetorically.
But no matter who wins in November, the United States will continue to prepare for war with China.
The Chinese government has made clear its aim to expand its influence in Asia, from turning uninhabited islands in the Pacific into military bases to asserting sovereignty on the high seas. And it all starts with Taiwan, where President Xi Jinping has ordered the Chinese military to be ready for invasion by 2027.
Taiwan has its own defenses, but military experts say it will be difficult to see how the island will repel Chinese aggression without U.S. support. Such a move would be a decision no matter who the president is at the time, but U.S. policymakers have no choice but to not participate if the U.S. wants to maintain its primacy. I’m worried about that.
“My sense is that a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have huge ripples throughout the region,” said Seth Jones, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China, rather than the United States, is likely to become the dominant military power in the region, which will lead to a variety of second- and third-order effects.”
For example, America’s Pacific allies may lose confidence in America’s deterrence capabilities and seek to enter into security agreements with China. America’s treaty allies Japan and South Korea could join the nuclear club as a way to protect themselves from China.
“Did the Roman Empire really fall?” Jones said. “I don’t know, but that’s the right question.”
“The tyranny of distance”
The US military knows how difficult it would be to invade Taiwan.
During World War II, when the island, known as Formosa, was occupied by Japan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff devised Operation Causeway, an invasion plan that would give the United States a base of attack closer to Japan. General Douglas MacArthur opposed the invasion of Taiwan as too dangerous. It meant crossing contested seas to fight well-defended armies in complex terrain. Military planners said an amphibious attack on the island would have been much more difficult than the D-Day landings at Normandy.
Few Army planners believe the Chinese military is ready to launch an amphibious attack on Taiwan.
“The first thing we have to do is we have to assemble a fairly large invasion force to march onto a defended island,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. Van Antwerp, director of operations. for Army Pacific Command, he said in an interview. “We have to cross the Taiwan Strait for 160 miles, and we’re doing it with large transport ships, and they’re very vulnerable during that crossing.”
Military planners say China will most likely try to secure a beachhead on Taiwan using light amphibious ships, but those ships would have to pass through waters heavily riddled with mines. Probably. And while air attack forces will likely try to target infrastructure, they will ultimately be able to attack an island the size of Taiwan, which has its own defenses and a population of 23 million people, without sending ground forces. There is no viable way to capture it. To come by sea.
General Van Antwerp said, “It would be impossible to get a large landing force across the Channel by ship.” “There is no other way.”
So China is working on it. Chinese military planners are working to repurpose civilian ferries to transport troops and equipment across the strait and build floating piers, U.S. officials said.
The Pentagon would not go into details about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build its defenses. But making it clear to China that amphibious attacks are dangerous is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.
Army officials also said they hope joint exercises with Pacific nations will demonstrate to Chinese military officials the full range of capabilities the United States possesses and can demonstrate.
Officials note that more than a quarter of the military’s 450,000 active duty personnel are already assigned to the Pacific. But they are free to define the region to include military forces from Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, as well as Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, and California. Taiwan is more than 9,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, a distance the Army calls the “tyranny of distance.”
The USS Rear Admiral Robert Smalls, anchored at Pearl Harbor, will be critical to bringing all of the Army’s equipment to the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived via the Panama Canal from Norfolk, Virginia, for the exercise, can berth and offload 900 tons of vehicles and cargo and, if necessary, troops to the island. .
Capt. Ander Thompson, commander of the 7th Engineer Diving Detachment from Pearl Harbor, spent several weeks this summer working with Philippine military divers clearing debris from a strategic port on Batane Island in the northern Philippines. He was part of a detachment. A few miles south of Taiwan.
The operation also deepens the port, making it easier for Army and Navy ships to access the port in the event of conflict. Batan is located near the Bashi Strait and could serve as a staging point for U.S. forces heading toward the Taiwan Strait.
Although the U.S. Air Force cannot establish air superiority over the entire Pacific Ocean, it can open corridors for free movement, for example, between the Philippines and other islands, which the Army calls the “Internal Line.” The United States already has some troops deployed, with about 54,000 in Japan and 25,000 in South Korea, but a much smaller number in the Philippines.
The Hawaii exercise, which ended in mid-October, was designed to replicate the conditions the military might expect to face in a war with China. Gone are the desert sand-colored military uniforms that were essential during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Hawaiian troops were dressed in jungle clothing and had face paint.
The military worked on a new strategy that combined what it had learned from the fighting in Ukraine and Russia. They dismantled and transitioned large, cumbersome command and control operations in 20 to 30 minutes and communicated with each other without the use of Army satellites, so the enemy could not pick up their conversations.
Learning how to move forward with a small team that could attack and disappear into thin air was key. The Army is sending troops 96 new rainforest-colored infantry squad vehicles, each capable of quickly moving up to nine soldiers through jungle terrain.
“You can send a company’s worth of personnel (about 130 people) along multiple routes in those vehicles, collect them at one point to attack the enemy, and then disappear in different directions. is very powerful,” said Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of the 25th Infantry Division.
“Raise the reserve”
The first of 864 Army paratroopers to take off from Alaska began appearing over the three volcanoes shortly after sunrise on October 7th.
From the ground, the scene was easily distinguishable from Army airborne commercials, with waves of jumpers bursting out of the sides of the C-17 and chutes billowing to the ground. Every soldier was to be equipped with two chutes, including a backup in case the main chute did not deploy within four seconds of jumping from the plane.
At about 7:35 a.m., Lt. Col. Tim Alvarado, garrison commander at Pohakuloa Training Range, watched the sun as the next C-17 approached.
“The paratroopers should be standing at this point. They would have had a 10-minute warning,” he said, narrating the jump to me. “The jumpmaster looks out to make sure there are no obstacles as the parachute prepares to launch.”
A C-17 roared overhead, and the jumper began to look like a closed umbrella, whooshing open into the sky as the chute widened. “Some of them get twisted, so we have to untie the rope so they don’t land awkwardly,” continued Colonel Alvarado.
Then, as I looked around the scene, I said, “That’s not true.”
In front of us, what looked like a cigarette in the sky landed in the middle of the canopy of an inflated balloon parachute. Above the jumper, Private First Class Partida, air moved through his chute, creating an undulating line. However, the air did not inflate the chute.
“Bring up the reserves,” Colonel Alvarado said quietly.
Reserve forces were never deployed. Private Partida crashed into the ground and disappeared from sight under the dogbashiri.
Captain Cary Mullen, an Army doctor, started running. Medics stationed throughout the drop zone were doing the same.
Members of the Private Partida squad were the first to reach him. He was calm and conscious, but had suffered spinal injuries. Captain Mullen arrived panting after a seven-minute sprint. She and Maj. Mitch Marks, an Army physician’s assistant, supported her neck and spine to avoid further injury.
“Well, he was very talkative and you could tell he wasn’t in any pain,” Captain Mullen later told me. She took her first vitals at 7:45 a.m., and by 8:20 a Black Hawk medevac helicopter was flying and heading to the hospital.
A statement issued the next day provided few details. “Today, a soldier from the 11th Airborne Division was injured in a training accident in Hawaii,” the statement said. The release makes no mention of unopened shoots or reserves.
Nor does it mention that doctors later fused Private Partida’s vertebrae together in multiple surgeries. It is unclear whether he will ever walk again.
Instead, the statement ended with an explanation of the exercise’s objectives, which include preparing airborne forces for “decisive operations in the U.S. Army’s Pacific Area of Responsibility.”
