Designing An Island JRTC Scenario Development.
As the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) enters its twelfth year of operation, thousands of soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors have immersed themselves in its joint exercise scenario. The JRTC, or Island of Aragon, scenario has significantly evolved in complexity and depth over the years. Individual military intelligence officers, noncommisioned officers (NCOs), and soldiers who have participated in previous rotations will usually find that missions and situations, especially with regard to intelligence, change and grow in complexity from rotation to rotation. A common mistake made by some JRTC participants is the assumption that we use a "canned" scenario that will be much the same as one they had previously experienced. Another frequent mistake is not allowing for the frequently changing weather conditions. The countries, armies, and other factors on the Island of Aragon may be fictional, but the weather is not. The JRTC needs to develop alternate plans for every operation in the event that rapid w eather changes prevent flying.Center Relocation
The JRTC scenario matured to its present, but still changing, configuration when it relocated from Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, to Fort Polk, Louisiana, in the summer of 1993. This relocation required that the JRTC change the "baseline documents" (those documents that are common to all rotations) to reflect the available training areas and an expanded joint environment. The baseline documents include-
* Country area studies.
* Orders of battle.
* Psychological operations studies.
* Unified Command, Joint Task Force (JTF) and Joint Special Operations Task Force (JSOTF) Operation Plans.
* Intelligence estimates.
The JRTC incorporated lessons learned, problem-area fixes, and information shortfalls into the new baseline documents. These documents had to be flexible enough to allow the details of any given rotation to change to support the exercising units' mission essential tasks list (METL). The JRTC uses division operations orders and pre-rotation intelligence message traffic to adapt to rotationally unique situations and to make any additional changes.
The JRTC scenario and the critical factors driving it changed as well. Influencing the ultimate design of the island were the sizes and types of participating units and their missions. The Center considered maneuver terrain availability, environmental restrictions, and exercising units' operational reaches. Future expansion of the JRTC's scope of exercises was another consideration. JRTC began in 1987 by exercising a single light-infantry battalion. Special operations forces (SOF) participated the following year; two-battalion rotations began in 1992, soon followed by increasingly larger brigade task forces with significant corps support slices.
Increasing Training Relevancy
The U.S. Armed Forces began experiencing increasingly complex contingency operations the same year that the JRTC moved. The following year's rotations demonstrated that the basic or "standard" JRTC rotation was becoming the exception rather than the rule. "Special" rotations, each one unique, included corps-level contingency operations, Ranger, SOF, counterdrug, peace-enforcement, Partnership for Peace, and mission readiness exercises (MRE), all conducted in a joint environment with varying degrees of complexity. A high degree of Air Force participation (tactical and air mobility), operating from several bases on the notional island, demanded other design considerations.
In order to support this variety of exercise scenarios, the new JRTC scenario had to be broad-ranging. flexible, and, to the extent possible, all-inclusive. A high order of foresight, informal wargaming, brainstorming, study of earlier and current real-world military operations, emerging events, and trends were necessary. It was important that the area studies, orders of battle (OBs), and other baseline documents be realistic. They also had to offer complex and in-depth information to avoid an overly simplistic background from which to develop scenarios.
Commanders frequently made two comments regarding the JRTC area studies, "They're too long, no one will read them," and "They contain more information than normally found in real-world area studies" Both comments are true; however, they are misunderstandings of the area studies' intent. The area studies are lengthy, but no one needs to read them in entirety. Readers need only to focus on the areas of direct concern and some related areas and be familiar enough with the organization of the area studies to find additional information, when necessary.
The quantity and detail of some information found in the Island of Aragon area studies are often more extensive than that found in actual area studies. This is because the Aragon area studies are virtually the only initial information sources available. There are no country studies, State Department reports and studies, national agency reports, news magazines, or any of the other open sources normally available to planners and intelligence staffers.
Atlantica's Inadequacies at Fort Chaffee
The Army developed the original Island of Atlantica, located at Fort Chaffee from 1987 through 1993, to provide a broad background exercise setting. All exercise activity originally took place only within the boundaries of Fort Chaffee. Supporting intelligence documents (intelligence summaries [INTSUMs], periodic intelligence reports, etc.) provided a basic tactical intelligence picture that the single light-infantry battalion task force needed and that the Center required for an overall islandwide intelligence picture. The "island" encompassed most of Arkansas, some of eastern Oklahoma, and a bit of southeast Tennessee.
As stated, the two-country Atlantica Island provided only a background setting for exercises conducted within the Fort Chaffee "player box." After three years, it became apparent that the ever-expanding scenario, increasing intelligence play, and growing SOF and Air Force participation were proving the island's design, area study, and OBs to be inadequate.
The reasons for this inadequacy included increasing integration of military intelligence, civil affairs (CA), psychological operations (PSYOP), judge advocate general, and numerous other activities. The increasing Air Force participants were interested in an island-wide air war. SOF units (Special Forces, Rangers, Special Operations Aviation) began executing missions at out-stations across the island (e.g., target sites located outside the Fort Chaffee "player box"). This included "crossborder" operations into the People's Democratic Republic of Atlantica (PDRA). Sufficiently detailed islandwide intelligence information was inadequate or nonexistent.
Atlantica was inadequate in many ways, and the expanding training requirements overwhelmed its design. As the scope of exercise scenarios and intelligence play grew, critical deficiencies became apparent.
The coastline, international border separating Cortina and the PDRA, and administrative boundaries (states, provinces) were random and failed to use actual administrative boundaries, especially county lines. This prevented, or at least made it more difficult, to use actual demographic data in providing population, economic, and cultural information to support CA and PSYOP requirements. It forced unnecessary effort in creating this data from scratch, which often proved to be less than realistic or inappropriate to the overall background of the island. A little foresight would have allowed the use of existing data, impossible with actual counties randomly chopped in two by artificial notional administrative boundaries or twothirds of a county dropped into the ocean.
The random drawing of the coastline and boundaries resulted in numerous illogical circumstances on the "island." Examples included a lack of coastal roads in many areas, lack of ports on coasts with significant nearby inland cities, coastal cities with their airports dropped into the ocean, large portions of a country inaccessible by highways or railroads, and failure to include existing training areas suitable for out-stations (resulting in a rush to create small islands to accommodate them).
The area study and OB for Atlantica were also deficient in many areas. The two countries were too small to support realistic population and industrial bases. They lacked a government organization below national level, non-governmental organizations (NGO) and humanitarian relief organizations (HRO), multiple hostnation police agencies, multiple internal security organizations, fully developed air and naval forces (to include their support infrastructure), and various secondary threats (multiple guerrilla factions, organized crime rings, bandit gangs, smugglers, etc.). These threats need not play a role in every given scenario, but they should be available if required.
Inviolate But Flexible Base Documentation
Before discussing the aspects and considerations employed to design the new Island of Aragon, it is important to understand that any notional island's design, its administrative boundaries at all levels, military bases, unit stationing, basic military force structure, government infrastructure, and so forth, remain inviolate. International boundaries never change. On the surface this may appear restrictive to scenario development, but it is not.
By maintaining the sanctity of baseline documents, developers can plan the exercises and prepare supporting intelligence documents with a minimum expenditure of time and resources. Changing baseline documents can lead to many difficulties because of their in-depth integration with all other rotational documents. The problem of deconflicting so many complex documents and ensuring continuity between them is obvious. A computer's "universal change" function does not catch everything; however, this does not translate to a rigidly inflexible scenario. The baseline documents reflect the situation 165 days prior to exercise hostilities, or D-165. This is the key to JRTC scenario-development flexibility.
This five-month window allows the JRTC staff to modify the "standard scenario." JRTC can disband existing military units and security forces or create new ones to adjust the force ratio and increase or decrease their training levels. Likewise, on-hand equipment levels can decrease through poor maintenance practices or the lack of spare parts. Since the OBs depict peacetime garrison stationing, units can redeploy tactically before D-Day to accommodate any desired scenario situation.
New guerrilla factions can emerge and existing ones can split or merge during the 165-day window. Drug cartels, organized crime rings, bandit gangs, and renegade militias can develop into new threats to support the desired scenario, In the same vein, new political leaders, warlords, or political factions can gain power through legitimate or illegal means.
The JRTC can introduce such changes through pre-exercise JTF periodic INTSUMs covering the D-165 to D-Day period. This provides the flexibility necessary to modify scenarios while conserving planning and development resources. The only piffall is that exercising units must not use documents from previous rotations.
Development of the Aragon Scenario
For the new island, the designers first determined the location of the island on the globe (see Figure 1). Regional considerations and realistic flight times and distances to off-island staging bases are two major considerations. Aragon's mid-Atlantic location places it in a strategically important position. If one desires an island nation from which refugees are traveling by leaking boats to the United States, it is probably not too realistic to position the island in the mid-Atlantic. Actual latitude and longitude locate cities, airports, seaports, etc., but of course these do not reflect the island's notional position. However, Aragon "moved" east from its south-central U.S. origin and retained its actual latitude.
The development of Aragon began a year before the move to Fort Polk. The aspects and considerations for Aragon included a broad range of factors. A major change from the Atlantica scenario was the inclusion of a third country. While the neutral country rarely participates in the conflicts, Victoria reflects the fact of third-country involvement in some capacity in every post-World War II U.S. conflict. Victoria can serve as a U.S. staging base, favored sanctuary for insurgents, an additional threat, or any number of other scenario variants.
The shape of the island is far from random. A variety of factors affected its ultimate design:
* The three countries had to be of sufficient size to support the desired population and industrial-economic bases and, thus, the nations' military force structures. The developers used actual county or parish population figures and demographics for this purpose.
* The next step was to identify all military installations (all Services) and potential training sites throughout the general region. These represent the staging bases, launch sites, out-stations for SOF targets, and flex mission objectives.
* The Center could not place the "player box" (Fort Polk) on the beach because exercising units traveled the north-to-south Highway 171 to the post's west. This placed Fort Polk farther from the ocean and prevented notional naval gunfire support into the eastern third of the training area. To provide sufficient naval gunfire coverage, they had to create Rosepine Basin south of the post.
* The JRTC selected every kilometer of the island coast with equal care to ensure rationality. They did not draw them at random or trace them along highways, as is done on some fictitious islands. They followed county or parish lines to allow for logical government administrative infrastructures at all levels by permitting the use of actual demographic, economic, and other data in the development of area studies, psychological studies, and target intelligence packages.
Many county (or in the case of Louisiana, parish) lines follow streams or rivers and these, when possible, formed the coastline. The developers rounded square-comered counties to provide a realistic shoreline trace. Of course, they actually used the Gulf Coast for Cortina's and the PDRA's southern coast. Developers determined coastal highways, bays, coastal cities (including airports and appropriate seaport notional data), and railroad access to all parts of each country.
The selection of international and internal administrative boundaries was equally important. All actual state borderlines remaining on the notional island are now either international or state-equivalent boundaries. The Cortina-PDRA border follows the actual Louisiana-Mississippi state line along the Mississippi River, which follows the river's original 1857 boundary course, so it now crosses back and forth over the river. Other state-equivalent boundaries not following actual U.S. State lines followed a series of county lines to retain the integrity of county-equivalents. Figure 2 shows the administrative subdivisions of the island's three countries and those of the United States. The developers named the state-equivalents and selected the national and state-equivalent capitals, taking into account demographics, history, and other considerations. They retained actual county or parish seats. They also selected major military regional command boundaries, which generally coincided with state-equivalents, althou gh there were boundary adjustments because of operational considerations.
The structure of the three countries' armed forces could not be merely a collection of random formations and units. The friendly and neutral countries' armed forces did not model U.S. forces. The developers structured and designated these differently, based on notional French and British military influence to provide distinctly foreign-appearing forces. Such foreign designations and organizational principles have confused intelligence personnel. There is a reason for this. A basic precept for combat training centers is to have U.S. forces face worse-case situations (e.g., light infantrymen fighting tanks [T-72s] and infantry fighting vehicles [BMP-2s]). Unusual host-nation unit designations and organization serve the same purpose for intelligence personnel and prepare them to look for such differences when dealing with real-world allied forces.
The FM 100-60, Armor- and Mechanized-Based Opposing Force: Organization Guide, opposing force (OPFOR) series manuals dictated the armed forces units' organization in the PDRA. However the government's political goals (unification of the Island of Aragon), real terrain geo-military considerations, notional history, and economic and population bases dictated its overall structure. The developers gave equal consideration to the other countries' armies, air forces, navies, security forces, and police agencies.
Other comparatively minor considerations can have a major impact on island design. The draft Aragon did not have a Little Rock Bay dividing the PDRA from Victoria. Instead, Victoria shared a common boundary with the PDRA along the Mississippi River, and the Cortina-Victoria border was further south. The developers created the bay to place Little Rock Air Force Base on a Cortinian island with U.S. basing rights, allowing the U.S. Air Force to operate from a secure base. Actual air operations take place from the base in support of JRTC rotations. To accommodate this desire, they pushed the Cortina-Victoria border north so that U.S.Air Force aircraft could avoid over-flying Victorian airspace while using actual air routes. The Ouachita Mountains on the border allow the Air Force to conduct terrain masking from a potentially hostile Victoria. As the bay swallowed much of eastern Victoria, the landmass of the country extended west and north to provide sufficient size and population.
Conclusion
Aragon is a rather large island. The pro-United States Republic of Cortina (host nation) includes the state of Louisiana, parts of east Texas, and southwest Arkansas. The hostile PDRA encompasses all of Mississippi, a strip of western Alabama, and a bit of southwest Tennessee. The neutral Republic of Victoria covers northwest Arkansas, eastern Oklahoma, and southwest Missouri. The result is a multi-country island with all of the ingredients necessary for developing virtually any scenario deemed necessary to support the training of U.S. armed forces. The development of the Island of Aragon has not ceased. An archipelago, some 35 miles to the east of the PDRA, the Pensacola Islands encompassing all of Eglin Air Force Base, will be part of the future revision of the area studies. It will be available in three forms, each with its own area study: as a semi-autonomous region of the PDRA, an independent Pensacola allied with the United States and Cortina, or as the People's Republic of Pensacola allied with the PDR A--a Grenadastyle situation. Each area study offers different anti-government insurgencies, which may or may not be pro-United States/Cortina. As always, flexibility is the keystone.
While JRTC took great pains to provide as realistic as possible geo-military, political, economic, and cultural environments for joint exercises, we must accept certain artificialities. For example, the Mississippi River has both north and south mouths; but then, it is not a perfect world.
Gordon Rottman is a retired master sergeant with active duty Special Forces, National Guard Airborne Infantry and Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) experience, and U.S. Army Reserve Military Intelligence experience. He is currently a contract special operations scenario writer for the Joint Readiness Training Center, at Fort Polk, Louisiana. He has published 19 military history books.
[Figure omitted]
Figure 2. Administrative Subdivisions of the Island of Aragon and the United States. Cortina PDRA Victoria United States Department Province State State Parish District County County Military Region MilitaryZone Military District ArmyArea
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| Title Annotation: | Island of Aragon Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana |
|---|---|
| Author: | Rottman, Master Sergeant Gordon L. |
| Publication: | Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Oct 1, 2001 |
| Words: | 2947 |
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