This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Current Events, Desert Storm Rings, Enduring Freedom Ring, Iraqi Freedom Rings, Military, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, USMC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
The OPFOR or Opposing Forces is used to refer to units which are designated to represent the enemy forces that US units may have to fight against in the event of war. Iknow that in my time in the military the biggest threat that we trained for was a WARSAW pact attack of Western Europe If this had happened we would have been severely outnumbered so the motto was to fight outnumbered and win. Our tactics reflected this.
The threat now is of a much different nature so most OPFOR that you will see will be dressed as terrorists. This dictates a change in training tactics also. Tactics must match up to the way the enemy fights.
OPFOR soldiers are trained to look, act, talk, think, and dress like the enemy that they represent. When we faced our OPFOR at Fort Irwin California, they looked like Russian soldiers and used equipment that was modified to look and perform like actual Russian equipment. They also used Russian tactics. This was a big help to us because we learned what our enemy’s equipment looked like. We also learned how to use our equipment to fight them best. We also learned the strengths and flaws in their tactics and how to defeat them. If we had actually gone to war with them I am confident that this training would have saved countless lives. There is actually a dealer in Fort Irwin who helps soldiers there to create custom military rings. All branches of service use this technique to train their servicemembers.
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