TRADOC Pam 525-3-7-01 - TRADOC - U.S. Army

TRADOC Pam 525-3-7-01future operating environment the Army must seek a balance in all three domains—holisticfitness. Only through such balance will the future Modular Force maintain a sharp edge ofcombat readiness and the agility that the future will demand.VignetteFirst Lieutenant Woodrow W. Millsaps, IV knew he was in trouble when his parachute failedto respond to the global positioning system guidance. He’d exited the sixth C-17 with his platoonaimed for the center of Pekanbaru International. The damned place had been lit up like aChristmas tree when they’d jumped, but Millsaps couldn’t see a single light when he looked downseconds before impact. Curious that his helmet mounted infrared and enhanced optics systemwasn’t functioning, Millsaps braced for landing blind, cursing the power pack that must haveeither failed or snagged and disconnected on his exit.Strapped to the lieutenant’s body were nearly seventy pounds of armor, his integrated bodysuit with its cooling system and health monitoring sensors, his M-19 weapon system and enough5.56-millimeter ball ammunition for a pretty serious fight. He had a Camelback under theparachute harness that he would fill from two canteens in his drop bag that also carried moreammo, a variety of grenades and rations. He didn’t know when to cut the bag loose so hewouldn’t land with it, so he popped the quick release almost as soon as he knew he was going inblind.Millsaps was a descendant of another Lieutenant by the same name, his great grandfather, aveteran of the 82 nd Airborne Division who had jumped into Normandy during World War II. Hisgrandfather and father were also paratrooper officers who had distinguished themselves incombat in Vietnam and OIF respectively. Woody the Fourth, they called him, and he had aheckuva legacy to live up to. Like his ancestors, Millsaps was a superb athlete. He relished thechallenges of jump and Ranger schools. Conditioning marches didn’t faze him, though hesometimes shared his contemporaries’ frustration with having to do forced marches with all themodern mobility the Army possessed. The airborne community was a competitive bunch. Hefared well in push-up and pull-up contests. It had gotten hard maintaining the airborne edgenow that all Infantry BCTs were essentially the same, but Millsaps was awfully proud to be ableto follow in his forebears’ footsteps.Woody the Fourth caught the flash of light reflecting off water. “Crap,” he thought, instantlytensing and running through the water landing procedures. As burdened as he was and blind atthat, shedding his kit was not going to be fun. If the water was shallow he might be lucky, but theMandau River splitting Pekanbaru from west to east was the only body of water he rememberedfrom their studies, and it was a swollen mountain-fed torrent according to the terrain data.He hit the water hard and went under immediately, his weapons bag floating up anddragging him under even further. He hadn’t had time to pop the harness shoulder releasesbefore impact as they’d taught. He did that before the chute could fill with water and become an95