Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 110

exercises that Pacific Pathways 16.01 tied together
during the year.3 Prior to deploying to the Philippines,
elements of 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team
(BCT), 2nd Infantry Division, began the operation in
Thailand in support of Exercise Cobra Gold, an annual bilateral exercise we have conducted with the Royal
Thai Army for over thirty years. They followed this
mission with a deployment to the Republic of Korea
in support of Exercise Foal Eagle, where they executed
reception, staging, onward movement, and integration
(RSOI) operations and then conducted four weeks of
partnered collective training before finally deploying
to the Philippines.

Observations
By weaving a series of tactical actions and deployments across an operational construct, U.S. Army
Pacific (USARPAC) and I Corps achieved the strategic
effects of shape, prevent, and deter in the Indo-Asia
Pacific. After planning, synchronizing, and executing
mission command during six Pacific Pathways exercises
in over two years of division command, I offer the following observations in an effort to describe the Army’s
108

A soldier assigned to the 25th Infantry Division crosses a river during
the waterborne operations portion of the Jungle Operations School
21 January 2015 at the 25th Infantry Division East Range Training
Complex, Hawaii. The training, associated with the Pacific Pathways
16.01 exercise, included soldiers from the Singapore Army’s 6th Division. (Photo by Spc. James K. McCann, U.S. Army)

success in the USPACOM area of responsibility so that
others may visualize and more completely understand
the scope of our efforts.
Observation #1: Continuous operations—the
totality of the deployment. Pacific Pathways places
the 25th ID and its associated enabling assets at the
BCT and echelon-above-brigade levels into a continuous state of planning, coordinating, synchronizing,
and executing deployments and operations across the
Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Even as we concluded Pacific
Pathways 16.01, iterations 16.02 and 16.03 were just
one terrain feature away from execution. In Pathways,
no country, training event, or series of experiences matters more than another does. Rather, it is the
totality of continual forward-deployed operations that
builds readiness—a readiness that simply cannot be
November-December 2016  MILITARY REVIEW