The Sage Eagle has landed: WSMR activates new training center

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Bringing 500 to 1,500 soldiers, airmen and Marines in their training units to White Sands Missile range six times a year, the Special Operations Forces Training and Experimentation Center (SOF-TEC) welcomed official activation March 8.

The operation allows U.S. SOF units and their partner forces to conduct training and certification on irregular warfare activities in an environment that replicates the modern-day battlefield

SOF-TEC Director Col. Theo Unbehagen said that Sage Eagle exercises actually began around September, bringing units in for pre-mission training for 4- to- 6-week exercises joining different units and organizations.

“What we are trying to achieve here is a true joint force, units from the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Space Force, NASA and other DoD organizations, to come here to actually train and get together,” Unbehagen said.  “We are laying the groundwork to have this be a more consistent joint training experimentation venue with the main effort being the Sage Eagle exercises.”

He said SOF-TEC also works with the area law enforcement agencies, community leadership and community centers so the Department of Defense can bring its civil affairs teams to do realistic military training.

For example, Ubehagen said, they can go into a firehouse and see how things are set up, activities that happen, look at the environment and how they run operations. The teams can then take that information with them as they help civilian populations they encounter and aid throughout the world.

“It’s real-world law enforcement, civil community leadership as they take that experience and training environment they can go overseas and to really help out those communities where we are trying to help build stability,” he said. “It’s not just about going out on the range and shooting.”

Deputy Commanding General – Support 1st Special Forces Command (Airborne) Brig. Gen. Derek Neal said WSMR is an excellent choice for SOF-TEC, which allows their units to practice in realistic terrain.

“SOF-TEC is all about the future,” he said “We now contend with new domains of space and cyberspace. Now and in the future, all domains can and will be tested simultaneously.”

Sgt. Maj. Gregg Kibbee, a senior operations NCO for the command, said WSMR is ideal for SOF-TEC because the military directs and manages the airspace over the installation.

“That allows for training opportunities that haven’t been achieved at scale before.,” he said.

In the past, DoD has been about land, air and sea, Kibbee said.

“With cyberspace and actual space, we are looking at two new domains,” he said. “Now we are bringing in new technology, satellites in space and more. It’s like the sea was, still is, not even discovered.”

DoD needs to recognize that, as a domain, technology and cyberspace go hand in hand with information operations.

“Looking at our environment we can’t look at it as just brick-and-mortar building, we have to look at that brick building as an infrastructure network,” Kibbee said. “It’s not just a radio; it’s a computer network so that’s why we need to be training on that, as a real-world environment.

“Certainly, we don’t want to be blind, we want to incorporate all the technologies we have as a multi-domain, joint force.”


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