FORT POLK, Louisiana – As the sun dipped below the horizon and the airfield was covered in a thick blanket of darkness, the whirl of rotors spinning broke the silence at Rhino Airfield.

Just after the aircraft noise, an undertone of boots on the ground and rucksacks shifting on backs were heard as Soldiers with 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division, loaded onto waiting CH-47 Chinooks and UH-60 Black Hawks as the joint forcible entry began April 12, at the Joint Readiness Training Center.

“The joint forcible entry presented us a lot of unique challenges,” said Maj. Rick Montcalm, 1st BCT executive officer. “Weather is always an issue for an air assault or airborne force. It reared its ugly head, causing us to delay and giving the enemy more time to prep, but it allowed us to go through a better, more deliberate planning and rehearsal process, which was good.”

Montcalm said the planning process and integration of supporting units went well.

“From an execution process we hit a few snags, but overall the intent of training, of getting the brigade into an area of operations, achieving an offensive mind set and rapidly expanding throughout the [area of operation], was fairly well achieved.”

The joint forcible entry began 12 days of intensive, 24-hour operations and training for the Bastogne Brigade as they entered “The Box,” an area expanding more than 200,000 acres used for the rotational exercises. In that area, Soldiers are deployed to fictitious countries, working with role players, host nation governments and other units from across the world, moving through actual towns, to make the training as realistic as possible.

“This environment provides us a unique opportunity to train in every aspect of our air assault capabilities,” Montcalm said. “Air assault is what we do in the 101st. It is a platform by which we launch from any given location into a contested area rapidly, that allows us to mass combat power as quick as possible. It’s a unique capability and JRTC provides a unique setting to operate from disparate locations over long distances against a near-peer threat.”

Rotation 16-06 differs from previous rotations the brigade has faced because it is a decisive action rotation, whereas in the past rotations were largely focused on counter insurgency. This exercise is now focused on the brigade’s fundamental tasks of conducting a joint force entry, a defense and an attack against a hybrid threat, Montcalm said.

“It’s in line with U.S. Army Forces Command and Department of the Army training objectives that as we come out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we go back to focusing on the fundamentals of our war craft capabilities,” Montcalm said.

In order to be prepared for any scenario possibly encountered on future deployments, Soldiers did not stay in pre-existing buildings, but built up forward operating bases and fighting positions, utilizing the tools and equipment they brought with them into The Box.

The brigade also faced two major challenges as the exercise began.

“First is the enemy,” Montcalm said. “We faced an enemy that is mechanized, very capable and very well trained. They have cyber capabilities and capable air assets that can inflict significant amounts of damage in a short time.”

The other friction comes internally through the pace of operations, Montcalm explained. The constant pace of operations, enemy activity and the planning process is different from previous rotations and has helped identified good learning points for future training.

“I think the enemy has presented challenges and has taken [the fight] to us just as much as we’ve taken it to them,” Montcalm said. “So there have been some victories where we’ve been successful in our engagements. There have been [engagements] where we were not so [successful], and it forces us to work on our sustainment efforts like casualty evacuations and resupply. Even when the fight is lost, the training value is still good.”

The big take away leaders like Montcalm want to see the Bastogne Soldiers walk with is the unrelenting spirit in which Soldiers go after the enemy, find out where they are and attack. Montcalm said if the fight is a win the action is repeated, but if it is a failure, Soldiers get back on their feet and try again.

“Focus on the task at hand, which is going after Geronimo,” Montcalm said. “It’s about learning. We are going to fail, [JRTC] is designed to make us fail, but that failure is going to make us better as individuals and teams.”

For rotation 16-06, many units throughout the formation augmented Bastogne. Pilots and crew chiefs with 3rd Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, provided aviation assets and Soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division from Fort Stewart, Georgia, augmented the rotation with armored vehicles.

Task Force Bastogne also has Soldiers with 35th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion from Japan, and elements from three different National Guard and Reserve units from the Midwest in this rotation. A contingent of Soldiers with the Uganda People’s Defense Force and more than 100 Illinois National Guardsmen from the 333rd Military Police Company, mostly from the greater Chicago region, augmented as host nation forces.