201212_UTMinuteman_W.. - Keep Trees

Hard Work, Dedication
of 142nd MI Makes
Panther Strike 2012
into Great Success
Story by Sgt. 1st Class Brock Jones
CAMP WILLIAMS, Utah — Nearly 700 military intelligence
Soldiers, trainers and professionals from 14 states, Guam,
Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, came to train
June 10-24 at Camp Williams during Panther Strike 2012.
From the beginning stages of planning for this year’s
exercise, hosted by the Utah National Guard’s 142nd Military
Intelligence Battalion, 300th Military Intelligence Brigade, the
goal was to expand the size and scope of Panther Strike to make
it the premier MI training event in the nation.
Lt. Col. Joseph Green, commander of 142nd, and Task
Force Panther commander, said that the exercise recently shifted
from a relatively small-scale event, focused primarily on human
intelligence, to a large, multidiscipline exercise that incorporates
human intelligence, signals intelligence, counterintelligence,
and imagery intelligence in a single, real-world, deploymentbased
scenario designed to prepare MI Soldiers for the kinds of
missions they face when deployed.
Incorporating the full spectrum of MI operations into a
single, cohesive exercise was extremely difficult because of how
complex the scenario had to be to allow for all the intelligence
disciplines to train at the same time, said Green. The difficulty
lay in creating a training opposition insurgency, fully fleshed
out with all its roles that military intelligence Soldiers could
collect information about, analyze, and then act on.
“All of that is a very complex kind of thing to try to draw
up and manage and so creating a real-life insurgency that can be
exploited by all those different disciplines has been difficult,”
said Green.
Despite the inherent difficulties with creating a training
scenario beneficial to all MI disciplines, Panther Strike
leadership and planners have maintained high expectations for
the exercise, now and in the future.
“We have a big vision for the exercise to be a mechanism to
train our Soldiers to be mobilization ready and prepared in their
collective MI tasks,” said Green. “That’s what I think we’ve
achieved with this version of Panther Strike, and from here on out
the brigade is intent on keeping the same kind of blueprint, still
moving it around to its battalions, but keeping it at this level.”
Responsibility for planning and conducting Panther Strike,
which was started by the 260th MI Battalion in Florida, rotates
16 Winter 2012
Panther Strike is a yearly Military Intelligence exercise
designed to provide collective training and evaluation
of intelligence assets from the team to the brigadestaff
level in a deployment-based scenario.
Photos by Sgt. 1st Class Brock Jones,
Spc. Ariel Solomon and Sgt. Rebecca Hansen
among the five battalions of the 300th: the Utah-based 142nd
and 141st, 341st in Washington, 223rd in California, 415th in
Louisiana, and Florida’s 260th. Last year, the rotation fell to
Florida, and Capt. Timothy Kelley, plans and operations officer
for the 142nd, who is the lead planner for this year’s iteration of
Panther Strike, observed that exercise. He met with the planners,
as well as brought after-action review comments back to Utah
to apply to the planning process for this year’s Panther Strike.
Kelley said that from the beginning stages of planning they have
tried to make the exercise more applicable to a larger training
audience than ever before.
“In previous years, there was more of an emphasis
on Warrior Tasks and battle drills than you see in Panther
Strike 2012,” said Kelley. “We really wanted to make this an
intelligence-centered exercise.”
Soldiers spent the first week of the exercise training on
equipment and tactics unique to their specialties. The second
week, Soldiers moved to a forward operating base downrange
on Camp Williams, and training transitioned from the classroom
setting to a real-world scenario in which Soldiers could put to
use their skills, as well as the prior week’s training, into practice.
Kelley and the many others involved in planning and
executing Panther Strike worked hard to create a training
environment that was intelligence-centric and that revolved
around the skills, equipment, and knowledge that Soldiers of
all intelligence fields would benefit from. Such emphasis on