Any future conflict the U.S. Army is called upon to fight will involve its allies. Be it in the Indo-Pacific Theater or European, the Army must strive toward a more interoperable force. Soldiers and allies must practice together the way they plan on fighting together in wartime.

By interacting more, American soldiers and allied troops readily learn to work better together. While some of these events can be strictly military, specifically on the eastern flank of NATO, any type of exchange is worthwhile. Human-to-human contact, especially at the junior soldier level, can be leveraged into an advantage in a future fight.

U.S. Army Forces Command commander Gen. Andrew Poppas, speaking in the U.K. last May as part of the Kermit Roosevelt Lecture series, highlighted the importance of being “technically and culturally interoperable,” which fundamentally improves with training and exchanges. This essay outlines a case study of what battalion-level relationships can achieve in both the training and interoperability realms.

Local Focus

While specific to Poland, the Polish Armed Forces’ Territorial Defence Forces (TDF) provide an excellent venue to exercise human interoperability. One can think of them as akin to the National Guard in the U.S.; however, given the small scale of Poland versus the U.S., they are more locally focused. The TDF are geographically static, so they stay in place regardless of how U.S. forces rotate through Poland.

Organized along a parallel structure to the Polish Armed Forces, members of the TDF have a wealth of combat experience, local knowledge, and Polish Armed Forces procedures and connections beneficial to allies seeking training.

The 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, which until May 29 served as the framework nation for NATO Forward Land Forces Battle Group-Poland in Bemowo Piskie, forged a deliberate connection with the 44th TDF Battalion (Light Infantry), headquartered in the nearby Polish city of Elk. Initiated by a mutual desire to increase training opportunities, this connection quickly flourished into a meaningful relationship.

The association works both ways. The TDF leverage their connections with both local Polish units and range-management personnel to facilitate combined training objectives. After initial growing pains when training was focused exclusively on U.S. objectives, the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, discovered that multinational exercises, both collective and individual, proved more valuable than anything a U.S. unit could accomplish on its own, especially when deployed to Poland.

Training together, usually at the individual level, enabled both units to share expertise on everything from anti-tank equipment to jujitsu. In line with Poppas’ comments, “training drives everything an Army does and everything a formation may—or may not—become.”

Collective Events

Small-scale training events served as the basis for this partnership, where U.S. soldiers and Polish soldiers began to forge individual bonds. Simply calling for fires or speaking over the radio takes time and practice, especially when a participant does not speak English as a first language.

Scaling up, the TDF and the U.S. working together toward collective training has been the goal for battle group operations. True interoperability takes time, practice and experience. While a nine-month rotation appears to be of long duration at first blush, training events and engagements populate to quickly fill any training calendar. Combining training with Polish forces increases opportunities from a resourcing perspective given that there is only so much land and so much time to train on it. Further, combined training creates hands-on interoperability experiences.

However, training is not the only experience that the 44th TDF and the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, shared. Basketball games, helping with local renovations, school visits and formal events to celebrate Polish and American holidays permeated the training calendar. The 44th TDF sponsors local schools where U.S. service members regularly conduct cultural exchanges.

Engaging with each other on the fields of friendly strife during sports events provided a welcome respite from regular training activities held on both sides. These events culminated with a large-scale event for Polish Veterans Day. Individual soldiers were able to experience both Polish culture and share common experiences with their peers in the Polish army.

Overcoming Obstacles

The language difference between English and Polish is high. While Americans usually can rely upon a soldier or two with some of an allied language, soldiers skilled in speaking Polish are not abundant. Fortunately, Polish soldiers usually possess some form of English-speaking skills. Nevertheless, linguists are a necessity for any type of advanced military training. What this means on both sides is the importance of reducing complexity in training to slower, simpler and easier-to-achieve objectives.

When the 44th TDF and NATO Forward Land Forces Battle Group-Poland trained together, the simpler the objective, the better the result. Rehearsals and regular interactions between liaison officers proved key to increasing the complexity of any joint training venture. While initially—from an American point of view—the rehearsals may have seemed excessive, creating a common operational picture across language and culture barriers takes more time than any leader generally is comfortable with. Well-spoken, embedded Polish liaison officers were critical to the success of these practices.

Further, even when speaking the same language, challenges remained with both tactics and military practices. Something as simple as transferring a battle damage assessment over the radio becomes an exercise in tactical patience. The U.S. Army tends to focus, at echelon, on situational training exercises, culminating, but not always resulting in, a live-fire exercise.

Live-Fire Training

Live fires feature much more frequently on Polish training calendars, and as such, their training spaces are designed to facilitate these types of events. The 44th TDF and the U.S. were able to leverage their mutual relationship with the Polish 15th Mechanized Brigade to conduct joint live fires.

Not only did this exercise reinforce some of the lessons from above, but it was instrumental in showcasing how live-fire exercises can be just as useful as situational training exercises, provided the stimuli for training were robust. This is especially true given the suitability of the training environment for such training.

While firepower and capability demonstrations can show the utility of combat platforms, in executing joint live fires, soldiers from both nations were able to better appreciate what each side could bring to bear in conflict.

The 44th TDF, wielding combat power roughly equivalent to a light infantry battalion, maintained a large number of armored warfare veterans who were experts in using Polish equipment to solve uniquely Polish problems. The terrain and weather conditions in northeast Poland necessitate different tactics, techniques and procedures that the 44th TDF was able to impart to the U.S.-led battle group.

While this seems like something that could easily be adapted, the local and highly trained nature of the 44th TDF made these lessons more directly applicable to the area of operations of NATO Forward Land Forces Battle Group-Poland.

Without a doubt, this deliberate bond between battalions proved fruitful at the individual and small-unit level. Driven by training, yet expanded past this fundamental military product, this connection enhanced organizational effectiveness through increasing human interoperability between Polish and American soldiers.

Relationships, despite the rotational nature of U.S. deployments to Europe, persist. Passing along these relationships is critical to maintaining interoperability at the human level, and the U.S. Army will be better postured to fight tonight if it continues to do so.

***

Lt. Col. Paul Supiński, Polish Armed Forces, is the commander of the 44th Territorial Defence Forces Battalion (Light Infantry). Previously, he served in the Polish Special Forces Command. He deployed to Afghanistan, Kosovo, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Maj. Alexander Boroff, U.S. Army, is the executive officer of the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, which on May 29 completed its nine-month rotation serving as the framework nation for NATO Forward Land Forces Battle Group-Poland. Previously, he served on the Joint Staff, the Army Staff and the 3rd Infantry Division staff. He deployed to Afghanistan.

Senior Cpl. Przemyslaw Oleska, Polish Armed Forces, is a member of the 44th Territorial Defence Forces Battalion (Light Infantry) and serves as the liaison officer to NATO Forward Land Forces Battle Group-Poland. Previously, he served in the Polish Armed Forces’ 15th Mechanized Brigade. He deployed twice to Afghanistan.